Everywhere You Go Now
by Ianuaria
Summary: New York, preseries(yes,I know it's 2017), immediately after the night of the affair. I'll put up a better summary when it won't be a spoiler. Addek with some Maddison, like it always is.
1. Chapter 1

**_What is she doing, starting a new story?_**

 ** _You're thinking that, right? Right? Yeah, me too. Anyway, it appears that exam time doe does weird things to my head, which means that this story has been rattling around in there for weeks and I just HAD to let it out._**

 ** _I'll continue if you want me to, so...let me know, kay? And also, you could g_** ** _o read my other stories, which I HAVE updated, but this site/app hates me and they've not been going to the top of the page so no one's been reading. I might even cry (jk) but seriously._**

 ** _Please read?_**

 ** _And now, end of ramble._**

* * *

" _Is this Addison Shepherd?"_

It scares her, that voice. Urgent, but not loud. Controlled.

As tightly controlled as she is, the phone in one hand, pressed to her ear, eyes on the frame in her other hand, bright smiles and a white dress, years between then and now but she can remember like it was yesterday...she _wishes_ it were yesterday because then she wouldn't have done this horrible thing she's done and he'd be at home and that person on the phone wouldn't be saying the things he's saying now.

It's her fault. She did this.

It scares her.

* * *

The phone, when it rings in the dark smothering silence of their home she ruined, it scares her.

So many things scare her.

The fact that she doesn't know where he is.

The way he held her, rough, uncaring, as he pushed her. Out. Of their home, out of his life.

.

 _"Mark," she says, and this time it's not a moan it's a hiss and she's shoving at his shoulders. "Mark-"_

 _._

The way they were, _before_ \- because that's how her life will always be from now on, divided irrevocably into a _before_ and an _after_ , by what she did - strangers passing each other, sleeping alone, speaking in cool words and heated gestures.

.

 _He's fumbling with clothes now but she can't seem to find any of her own, she drags a t-shirt over her head as two sets of footsteps sound on the stairs._

 _There's the sound of a door slamming, footsteps coming back up the stairs._

 _._

The way they are now, in the after, screams and tears and doors slammed without goodbyes.

She can still feel her heart thrumming against her chest, rattling its cage, the banister pressing into her cheek. It'll leave marks, soft creases, and they'll fade with time.

Everything heals. With time, she'll heal.

They'll heal. It's going to be okay.

.

 _"What are you doing," she's saying and her voice isn't hers, it's high and panicky and ...pleading. It's not her voice, it can't be her words._

 _"What are you doing with my clothes, Derek?"_

 _._

The phone stops ringing and silence descends again, someone's headlights swivel across the windows but she knows better than to think it's him. Hope is dangerous, it lifts you up and slams you back down again. She can't hope.

It was probably Mark, calling again.

 _Are you okay_ he said, rushed, like he knew she was about to slam the phone down. He knows her too well, because that's exactly what she did, and anyway there was no point answering because how can she be okay...after what she did?

After what _they_ did?

Mark sounded okay though, of course he sounded okay, he's Mark, solid and dependable and never changing. Derek's the one who changed.

Changed so much. Her clothes are still a sodden heap on the rug in the foyer, she's obsessive about that rug, it's pristine, and now it's going to be stained she realises dully and then she laughs a little at how trivial that is in comparison to what has just happened.

But she noticed it, and she picks up the damp heap and flings it unceremoniously into the empty hamper in the master bathroom, stepping afterwards unto the shower, scrubbing furiously, pink rising to the surface of her skin.

She can still feel him, just this side of rough, insistent, lips on her neck and the burn of an unshaven cheek, red prickles along her collarbones.

.

 _"I can't look at you," he says, shaking his head disgustedly. "I look at you and I feel nauseous."_

 _._

They burn bright under hot water, steam fogging the glass until she can't see anymore, can't breathe with the water pounding around her.

But she can hear, the phone shrill in the deafening silence.

.

 _We're not Derek and Addison anymore._

 _._

Mark knows to leave her alone. He knows her. He cares enough to know this about her, that she needs to be alone. He cares enough to actually do it.

It's hardly going to be Derek.

.

 _"You stay, I'll go. I'll get my stuff in the morning."_

 _._

It's probably a patient, she reflects as she wraps a towel around herself, hair dripping cold onto her shoulders. A patient, she can handle.

The voice on the other end is unfamiliar though, not one of her residents or even one of her nurses. Unfamiliar, as in she doesn't know who it belongs to.

The tone, she recognises. She's used it herself, at two, three, five in the morning, exhausted and relieved and the slightest bit rushed and annoyed.

"Is this Addison Shepherd?"

 _Don't know for how long_ she'd like to say, but obviously she doesn't.

"Yes?"

"You're Derek Shepherd's wife?"

 _For better or for worse... in sickness and in health._ It's her fault. Whichever way you look at it, it's all her fault because she knows the words that will issue from the phone in the next breath.

"I'll be there."

* * *

 ** _So, should I go on? Stop? Are you bored of me yet? Do I ask too many questions?_**

 ** _Will you please review?_**

 ** _Title : Inara George, Fools in Love. (aka the Addek theme song, bloody fools that they are.)_**


	2. Chapter 2

**_Thank you guys so so much for all the reviews and positive feedback on the first chapter!_**

 ** _Let's see if you like the second just as much._**

 ** _(Hey, winter machine, if you're reading...here's to mind meld. Especially the Addek kind.)_**

* * *

It's funny how little she's noticed.

She's in the hospital more often than not, sweeping down corridors trailed by flocks of interns, in and out of OR's, consulting in an office she's redecorated as much as their home. In hospital rooms, speaking to patients and families, stopping briefly in the cafeteria and even more briefly in the staff lounges.

In waiting rooms, delivering news that's bad as often as it is good.

And now she's here too, in a waiting room that smells of stale coffee and feet and sweat and fear, and it's funny how little she's noticed of _this_ side of the thick red stripe on the floor.

On her side, everyone has a role. They all know what they need to do, and when, and how, and they do it perfectly. On this side, she's lost, reduced to , signing consent on forms for surgeries that are starting to sound increasingly dire, snatching at snippets of information, threading them together to weave a picture that terrifies her.

It's her fault.

"I need to know," she's saying to the babyfaced intern who's been speaking to her in a voice that's calm shot through with uncertainty, the voice she used to have a decade ago when she hadn't been doing this long enough.

"Ma'am, I'll need you to sit-" he's saying, flustered, reaching for her shoulder and she jerks back, feeling eyes on her back, the others in the waiting room, who would give anything to be in her place right now, to be the one getting news - something, _anything_ \- about their loved one.

"I'm a doctor too, goddamn it, just _tell me_!"

He's flustered now, obviously floundering and alone, they don't tell you what to do when you get _no_ as an answer, and she takes advantage of it to step past him into the area marked _Authorised Personnel Only_.

"Hey!"

She turns over one shoulder long enough to see a heavy set nurse bearing down on her, clearly angry.

"You can't be in here, lady, I don't know who you are, but-"

"Derek," she says quickly. "Derek Shepherd, he's my husband-"

 _Husband_.

"He's in surgery?" the nurses face softens the slightest bit and the suggestion of pity irritates her more than the silence.

She doesn't deserve the pity.

"Yes," she breathes, just grateful to have her listen. "Listen, I'm a doctor. _He's_ a doctor - surgeons, we're surgeons, I need to see-"

"Listen, Mrs.- Dr. Shepherd. Your husband is in surgery. He's being taken care of, I can check on him for you, get you an update, but you can't go in that OR right now, he needs you be his wife, not a surgeon."

 _And that right there is the problem._

Medicine? That's easy, they can talk surgery and patients and difficult cases. What they can't - won't - talk about is them.

 _We're not Derek and Addison anymore._

"Please." she blurts as the nurse starts to steers her firmly back towards the double doors. "Just the scans, at least. Please."

It's smaller than she's used to, the viewing room, painted drab yellow that looks even worse with the lights off, one of the lightboxes flickering feebly. Dying.

"Stay in here." the nurse instructs. Theresa, that's her name, the name of the nurse who brought her these scans.

They draw her eyes like a dead body and she shudders at the illusion, unable to break away from the images glowing in front of her.

"They said he's stable," Theresa reminds her cautiously. "He's in surgery, remember, and he's going to-"

"Who's _they_?" she cuts her off briskly, crossing her arms over her chest when she feels the familiar soreness in her throat. Not now. There's no time for that right now.

"He's got Sullivan, that's our Chief of General, Harrison from Neuro, Cotran from Cardio, Ortho's on standby-"

"Why is ortho on standby?" she asks, and her voice shakes despite the nails she's digging into her palm. "He's a surgeon, he needs-"

"Dr.- Addison," Theresa says sharply, even though the hand on her shoulder is gentle and she finds she needs the extra support. "It was more important to control the hemorrhages in the-"

"I know," she whispers. "I know, but-"

"It's hard, I know. Is there anyone I can call for you, family, a friend? You shouldn't be alone, not right now."

"Ma-"

The syllable leaps to her mouth instantly. Because six hours ago, it would have been the right answer.

Theresa is looking at her, one eyebrow raised, waiting.

It's late, she reasons. Four am. He's going to be fine. No need to call Mom, no need to wake her until there's news. The girls probably can't come anyway, babysitters would need to be arranged, schedules messed up.

And their other friends...they're insular, a well oiled unit of three. Mark and DerekandAddison. There's no one who's close enough to trust.

Except- no. She can't face them now. She'd know, instantly, that something had happened. Savvy knows her too well.

It's her mess. Her fault.

"No." she croaks. "No one."

..

It's cold, the air conditioning cranked high for whatever reason, and she shivers a little, pushing damp hair from her shoulders, pulling the baggy sweater around her tighter. It's his, the sweater, chunky and black. She probably bought it for him. He picked it out of his closet that morning- the first morning he'd been home in the last eight- for a milk run.

He pulled it over his head, coming out of it all tousled and she's almost smiled at him, reached over to run her fingers through the dark curls, but then he'd frowned and pulled it back off and said it wasn't cold enough outside to need it.

It wasn't, not really - it was still and heavy, chilly but not cold. Cloudy. It rained in the late afternoon, cracking thunder as she leaned across him in the scrub room for a mask. He told her not to wait for him, to head home. He'd be late.

He wasn't.

She'd walked home. She'd forgotten the umbrella somewhere, or maybe she never brought it in that day. And by the time she got home she was soaked through. It had never stopped raining.

It still is, streaking thickly down the window. Her car skidded as she raced here, sending her heart thumping into her throat, and she imagined what it must have been like, running the stop sign and a drunk driver catching the tail end of that jeep he loves so much. Spinning it, slamming it back around into the other car.

She's spoken to the police, their kind, low voices building fear. Yes, he left home around eleven. No, she doesn't know where he was headed - _where, Derek? Where were you going?_. Yes, she was at home. No, she didn't answer the phone. Once, twice, thrice, mistakes in a row like ducklings. Yes, he was distracted. Had a lot on his mind. No, he hadn't been drinking. That she knew of.

 _Busy surgeon,eh?_ said the good cop. _Sure that's all_ said the bad cop.

Yes and no and no and yes, good and bad and worse melting together in her head. Damp wool itchy against her skin, searing with shame. Scans burned into the backs of her eyelids, taunting.

The shattered chest she's laid her head on. Arms that have held her so often, shot through with cracks. Abdomen and pelvis, diffuse, barely discernible organs and she imagines the blood pooling, rippling thick and hot over the surgeon's fingers.

Surgeons she doesn't know, has never met, doesn't trust.

..

"You can see him now."

She's being so patient, this nurse, and it scares her more than if she had been brisk and rude. This sympathy, the soft voice, the gentle hand on her elbow guiding her down the hallway to a room she's not sure she's welcome in...it means there's something to worry about.

"Is he.." her voice cracks, hoarse from disuse.

"It'll be a while," the nurse says. She knows this. She should know this. The anesthesia, the sedation, the pain meds...he's not going to be awake, not really. She _should_ know this, it's just that she keeps seeing his face before he slammed the door on her, before he left, that cold rage, the utter disbelief.

But he's not awake, not now.

Now, his eyes are closed, fresh bruising along the right side, angry purple, blood matted into his hair _-CT was clear -_ a stiff collar around his neck, needles and tubes and wires and his hand is so cold and slack in hers, his fingers don't curl around hers like they always do, thumb rubbing along her knuckles; his chest rises and fall rhythmically under her other hand.

 _I did this to you_.

She did this, the glittering metal holding his right leg together, the pristine dressings hiding incisions made to save his life.

 _I love you._

She doesn't realise she's said it out loud, her voice thick and choked, unfamiliar to her own ears, until someone is guiding her gently into a chair, patting her back soothingly, warm salty tears running down her already-raw cheeks.

 _No_ she says, she doesn't want them to call someone for her. No one would come, not if they knew what she'd done.

They'd come for him, though. But she's not sure he would want anyone to know... he left. He was leaving. Leaving the city, his job, his friends, family. Her. Not a word to anyone.

He didn't want them to know.

Right?

Right.

She's right. _She's_ right, and so is the nurse when she says she can't do this alone.

She can't. She can't have him wake up and have her be the first thing he sees.

 _I look at you and I feel nauseous_.

But he didn't want anyone to know.

Mark though... he knows. He already knows.

He must have passed Derek last night, on the landing. On the stairs. She heard the back door shut while he was coming back up.

They've been friends for more than thirty years. She's the one who changed the equation.

So she makes the call - rather, lets someone make it for her, she doesn't want him to hear the pain in her voice, the need, the crawling fear. He needs to be here for Derek. Not for her.

..

"Move!"

The voice is sharp, sharp as the elbow in her side as she stands there frozen, watching his body arc off the bed, tubes pulled from his throat. Ice in her hands, pulled away again, annoyed looks when she won't do what they're expecting her to.

It's a stranger's hands on his forehead now, soothing, _you were in an accident, you're in the hospital, you're fine_ but no he's not, he can't be fine not the way he's looking at her, eyes blank and icy blue.

 _He knows, he remembers,_ she's thinking desperately, and she takes a step back into a familiar body, a warm arm wrapping comfortingly around her. Not fort she needs, but it's all he knows how to give.

"Addie?" he whispers, his voice as ragged as her own. "Are you all right?"

* * *

 ** _Too much of an angst fest? I'm trying, really really hard, to break this misery-writing I've got going on, so if you could, please leave me some fluffy prompts so I can try my hand at something non-angsty!_**

 ** _And also, please review like the awesome people you are._**


	3. Chapter 3

**_Thanks to all my regular reviewers; you're the reason I keep writing!_**

* * *

"You were in an accident," she's saying softly, it might be the tenth time or the hundredth or the millionth. She isn't sure. "You were in an accident, and you're in the hospital now."

 _You've had surgery. You're okay._ The words spill from her mouth without her having to think too much, it's the truth, after all.

It's not really a lie if he doesn't remember.

And he doesn't remember. Or he wouldn't be looking at her the way he is now, fingers brushing against the ends of her lank hair.

"You're okay." he echoes her words.

"I am."

Her voice shakes a little, her vision blurring.

"You weren't with me?"

"No," she says honestly. She wasn't. She should have been, but he didn't want her there.

"Where was I going again?" he screws his eyes against the light, and she turns the shade so it doesn't hit his eyes.

 _That's a good question._

"You were... I don't know." she finally admits, and if he thinks it strange he doesn't press the issue.

"You look awful," he smiles, tugging at a damp strand of hair, lips forming a semblance of a smile among the bruising, the fine web of of tiny cuts at his hairline, so red against his pale skin.

"You don't look too good yourself." she manages, pushing his hair back and he closes his eyes, enjoying the feeling of her hand on his skin.

"Yeah, well, I'm the one who got broadsided by a car, so-" he stops suddenly, his fingers stiffening in hers.

He was still wearing his ring, wherever he was off to...he still had his ring.

An EMT had the foresight to slip it from his finger before they began to swell, and someone handed it to her in the hallway outside the ICU, speaking meaningless words of comfort to her feet.

She slid it around her thumb, where it spun loosely for a while; she almost dropped it, so she put in her pocket and now she can feel it burning against her skin.

"Addison, the other car, was anyone-"

His eyes are panicked, his voice rough, and the way he's clenching her hand is breaking her heart.

 _If only you knew..._

"It was a college student," she begins carefully. "He was drunk, Derek, he ran the light and you didn't see him, it was raining and it was dark and -"

 _You were distracted._ "No." he whispers. "Addie. No, please don't tell me-"

"I'm sorry."

 _So, so sorry._ "No," he murmurs, over and over again, tears streaking down his face. "I can't. I can't, Addie, I can't have-"

It was a college kid, twenty-two, drunk, on his way back after dropping off a friend. It was dark, rainy, the road was slick. Maybe they saw each other, maybe they didn't, but it was too late.

Too late for the boy whose name she can't even remember.

"I'm sorry," she tries again; it comes out in a whimper and then she's half on top of him, stroking his hair, his face, soothing, being soothed, and he's holding onto her tightly enough that she can barely breathe, the way he hasn't in years.

And it feels good, so good, and she lets him.

What's another lie, after all these others?

..

"Addison."

She jumps a little at the sound of her name, unfamiliar among the soft beeps and whirs of machinery. Machinery that is connected to Derek.

He looks utterly defeated, standing in the doorway of the glass cubicle.

"What are you doing here." she mumbles, gently disentangling her fingers form Derek's. Her hair is damp with tears, a fact that neither of them mentions.

"Can I -" he motions towards the bed, and she feels a rush of guilt. More than three decades of friendship, and he has to ask if he can see him.

"I...thinks it's better if you don't." she replies, surprised at how cool and steady her voice is. Unemotional.

"Red, please."

"Mark - after what happened? Do you really think he needs to -"

"So what, are you just gonna sit there all Florence Nightingale and hope he never remembers?" he spits back, his voice low enough not to carry out of the cubicle but in here it's plenty loud. "For fuck's sake, Addison - wake up. Your marriage is a mess. I helped you screw it up, I won't deny that - but he's my friend. He's my friend before you were his anyone and I'm not going to let you lie to him."

"I'm not." she snaps, clicking the door shut behind her. "I'm not lying, Mark, I'm not, I just -"

"You need him to need you," he laughs, a hollow, ugly sound. "And now that he does, you're enjoying it while you can, right?"

She opens her mouth, reminding herself that he's in shock too, that he's hurting, scared, running on adrenaline just like she is, but to her horror she finds herself dissolving into tears instead.

"Hey," he says, sounding distinctly uncomfortable. It took her years before she ever cried in front of Derek; Mark has probably never even seen her get more than slightly upset. "Come on, Red, don't cry."

But she can't, she can't _not cry_ because it's her fault Derek is lying there still and silent in that bed, it's her fault he doesn't even remember what she did to him - what _they_ did to him and she sobs harder as Mark draws her down on onto a hard becn in the hallway because while his hands are comforting against her back, an arms curving across her body to hold her in place, shield her from any stares, his body is stiff, arching away from hers.

She's the one who plays her cards close to her chest, hiding her emotions, sparing with words of comfort or praise. Derek... he's the one who can both cut and heal with a single sentence. Mark is the most physical, free with his feelings, always ready with a hug, a pat on the back, and he never touched her this way before.

Even before last night, he never censored himself. They were friends - close friends - all three of them, and there was never, _never_ a shadow of doubt in anyone's mind where the lines were drawn.

But now, now that they've blurred the lines probably beyond repair, he feels the need to hold her like a stranger, and it makes her sob breathlessly, the air hitching form her lungs in painful gasps, because she realises she's lost not one but both of them.

"You okay?" Mark asks gruffly as she lifts her head from his shoulder. It feels so heavy, she can barely hold it up.

"I'm sorry." she mutters. He doesn't have to do this. It's not his responsibility to pick up the detritus of their marriage.

"It's okay." he says, patting her clumsily on the back as he hands her a tissue from the table beside them. "It's probably good for you, clearing your...whatever. Kath would know."

She sniffles at the sound of her sister-in-law's name, swiping another tissue even though the damage is probably too much for tissues.

Kath...and Liz and Nancy and Carolyn. Amy.

What is she going to say to them?

The thought brings a fresh wave of tears, and she leans across Mark's torso, still perched awkwardly in his lap, to snag another tissue, and as she does, he snaps back in his seat, hitting the wall hard enough she hears the cheap plastic frames rattle.

"Get up."

His voice is flat, his hands pushing at her while she's still leaning over so that she stumbles and he has no choice but to grab her around the waist before she falls.

"Mark, _what-_ "

His eyes aren't on her, they're fixed somewhere beyond her shoulder, and she turns to follow his gaze right into Derek's.

..

"Derek," she starts breathlessly.

"Get out."

"Derek, please-"

"Get _out_ of my room," he says calmly, his voice steadier than it was ten minutes ago. "It's actually mine this time, so I can say it."

And he does say it, such venom in his tone that she actually steps back, barely recognising the man staring at her.

"You looked cosy together," he smiles coldly. "Almost...sweet. I expect you didn't bargain on me interrupting you little moment, though, so please, feel free." he gestures to the door with his good hand.

His left hand.

His right hand...

"I said I'd be back in the morning, didn't I ?" he muses; he could be asking her for the time. "Guess it wasn't worth it."

"I'm sorry," she whimpers, and he laughs.

It catches in his throat, turning into a cough, wheezing, gasping for air.

"Get _out_." he says again, all traces of icy indifference falling away as he drops back against his pillow, the monitors starting the pick up pace, and a light above the door goes off.

She reaches for the mask hanging on the wall, flailing blindly for the switch, but his fingers scrabble at her wrist, scratching as he pushes her away.

"Get out," he manages again, and even though it's strangled and hoarse, it's clear to the doctor and nurse who have come flying at the sound of the alarm.

They look confused, so she waves at them to continue.

"Not ... not you," she says, backing away. Out. "He means me."

 ** _.._**

The water is warm and trickling, a faint chemical scent to it, but it feels restorative as she splashes some against her face, hoping to smooth out the blotchy red skin of her face, her swollen eyes.

She turns her attention to rinsing the vomit out of the hank of hair she didn't pull back fast enough before she retched over the toilet bowl, bile burning her throat on the way up.

 _Get out._

She did, stumbling dazed into the hallway and almost falling against Mark again, the brush of his heated skin against hers sending her spinning in search of a restroom, hand over her mouth, heart pounding.

 _Get out._

Two women walk in behind her, girls really, chatting blithely about this procedure and that that they'd like to get in on -med students probably, wide eyed and eager - and one of them says _did you hear about the neurosurgeon up in 22 23? I hear he's really messed up._

 _Shepherd, right?_ the other one asks, shaking out her hair in front of the mirror. _Yeah. Sad._

It makes her gag again, and the girl ostentatiously moves one sink over as her friend disappears into a stall.

"Oh damn," the one in the stall groans. "Pass me a tampon?"

The other one's hand passes over the top of the door, she can hear rustling and running water and the sound of the flush faintly over the pounding in her head.

 _Guess it wasn't worth it._

* * *

 ** _Please please please please please please please please please please review._**

 ** _Also, sorry for all the angst._**


	4. Chapter 4

**_To everyone who reviewed on the last chapter; this one's for you._**

* * *

"Where have you been?"

Nancy sounds suspicious, her voice probing. She hears it like it's far away, muffled through the cotton-wool fog of her own thoughts.

"Right here." she says, convincingly enough. Nancy doesn't look convinced. They've always been close, her and Nancy. They know things about each other.

They know when they aren't telling each other things.

Her throat is still raw from the episode in the bathroom earlier, a flat metallic taste still lingering in her mouth. The words come out rough and low, Nancy's eyes narrowing.

"You look like crap." she says finally, folding herself onto the bench beside her. It's outside the nursery, rows of fat pink babies swaddled in pastel laid out in front of them like pastries in a window, proud fathers leaning into the glass.

 _Get out._

"He was still sleeping when I saw him," Nancy says conversationally. Like any of this is normal. "But he's going to be okay. Right?"

She hums a response, unable to summon words. Nancy turns away from the view in front of them, scrutinising with a clinicians gaze. Her hand is cool and comforting against her forehead; she leans into her touch without thinking.

"You're burning up, Addie." she frowns.

 _Everything's burning. Down, not up._

But she must be right, because she feels heavy, weighted, her body slow to obey commands. It must be her wet clothes, damp hair, the chill of the air conditioned ICU she sat in. Until he threw her out.

"Come on, let's get you out of here." her hands are firm, no-nonsense, on her arm. "You're no use to him if you're sick."

* * *

"It's good that you were there." Carolyn is saying. To Mark. Mark looks at her, a fleeting glance, furtive and guilty.

Nancy catches it, her eyes - like Derek's eyes, so blue - darting from one to the other, her fingers like claws on her shoulder as she urges her to take a sip of the foul coffee someone has procured.

She's wearing scrubs now, a size too big and crumpled, an ugly gray color. They're clean and warm though. They make her feel guiltier.

"Yeah," Nancy echoes. "He was probably a great help, wasn't he Addie?"

She takes advantage of Nancy's momentary distraction to tip the coffee into a nearby potted plant. Does coffee kill plants? Maybe. One more thing she's hurt.

"Are you all right, dear?" Carolyn asks. She catches sight of herself in the rain-streaked window opposite, eyes like bruises in a face whiter than the wall behind her, her hair still damp and lank. "You look...tired."

She realises her mother-in-law has probably never seen her looking less than coordinated before. Mainly because she never let her. Certainly she's never seen her such a mess before.

"I'm fine."

 _We're fine._

"Where was he going anyway?" Kathleen asks, swinging one leg over the other, crossing them at the knee. Her glasses are slipping off the end of her nose - like Derek's nose - and she imagines her talking to her patients the exact same way, that calm melodious voice like she knows you're hiding something.

"No idea." she rasps; Carolyn comes over to press the back of her hand to her cheek, her throat. Would she press down, if she knew what she'd done to her son? It would be so easy. _Snap_.

"Honey, you have a fever." she says matter of factly, and she can see her mouth -like Derek's, she notices distractedly - moving, blurring as her eyes forget how to work. "Addison?"

The room smells of stale sweat and bad coffee and disinfectant and fear and their pity, their eyes looking at her softly like this isn't all her fault, Mark at the back, his eyes like a warning.

 _Don't tell_ he urged her as they walked down the corridor towards them, a flapping swarm of sisters. _Not until Derek wakes up_.

He might not want them to know, Mark reasoned. He was, after all, sneaking out of the city without telling a soul.

She swallowed it like medicine, bitter but necessary. She needed this lie - it's not a lie, just omission - if she was going to stand in front of his - _their_ \- family like she hadn't done this to him.

" _Addison_."

"I'm fine." she smiles. They look relieved. " _I'm_ fine, Mom."

If she catches the emphasis on the first word, she doesn't show it.

* * *

"Hand function." Nancy mutters feverishly, flipping through the pages of his purloined chart. "Have they checked his hand function yet?"

"He's asleep, Nance." she says. Hope he stays that way a while, while she works out what she's going to tell him.

"He's a _surgeon_." she replies heatedly. "Those are million dollar hands. You of all people know that-" Her eyes fall to Addison's hands, clenched tight around the edge of the faded green countertop. "What's that?"

 _Million dollar hands_ they used to tease each other. Holding hands, they doubled. Two million. They were so good, the best, brilliant. People came from across the country to let these million dollar hands cut into them. They saved lives. They didn't have time to hold hands anymore.

But they still had the million dollar hands. Was it enough?

She looks down at her hands too. They feel alien, swollen, balloons attached to the ends of her aching arms. Bruises striped fresh and purple across white wrists, a blue vein pulsing under the skin. Both hands.

 _Get out of my house._

Nancy looks slowly up at her, eyes slitting. "Addie?"

"They're nothing."

 _Not in comparison to what I did._

"You can talk to me," she's saying now, her voice rushed, head ducked like she doesn't want anyone to hear. "You know that, right?"

Nancy touches her wrists lightly, a finger skimming over the raised marks. The skin feels tight, stretched, warm. She tries not to wince, to flinch; she flexes her fingers carefully after she lets go. All in order. She's fine.

She tugs the sleeves of the borrowed jacket down over her wrists. Mark's jacket. It smells like him. She still feels cold.

"It's nothing." she says again. "They'll check his hand when he wakes up."

* * *

"He was always smart." Carolyn is saying reminiscently. She resists the desire to correct her use of that past tense. "Remember, Mark? The science fair, when was that-"

"Fourth grade." he supplies dully. He doesn't look guilty so much as angry. Maybe it looks different on everyone. Maybe people carry secrets differently.

"That's right." Carolyn beams. "You boys did that thing with the frogs, and the eggs, you put stuff in the water, made it different temperatures. To make the eggs hatch faster, and you won first prize. _Brilliant_ , they said. Remember?"

"Yeah." Mark says. So much history. Frogs and eggs and baseball, somewhere along the years it turned to cadavers and medicine and women. But they've always had each other.

"You guys kept a few," Kath laughs. She sounds nervous, exhausted. She laughs longer than it was actually funny. No one stops her. "In the bathroom."

"You microwaved one," Carolyn says suddenly, looking at Mark. "Derek's favorite one. He wouldn't let you bat first, you said. So you microwaved his favorite frog."

"I never pressed start." Mark reminds her feebly, but she isn't listening.

"He's awake, if you'd like to see him."

* * *

In the end, she and Carolyn get to go in first. She stands there stoically until her son croaks her name, then she dissolves into tears, stroking his hair, his face. Her baby. Would she ever forgive her, if she knew?

Would anyone forgive the person who does this to their child?

He catches sight of her then, hovering uncertainly by the door.

She knows this man so well. What makes him laugh, what makes him angry. What can turn his mood in an instant. The places he like to go to get away from things. The things he needs to get away from. Never thought it would be _her_ he needed to get away from. She knows his tells, the fingers through his hair that signal frustration, the tapping feet that are impatience, the clenched jaw of rage, the sparkling eyes of suppressed laughter, the drum of fingers on her skin when he wants her to turn over.

She knows his smiles, his tired smile and his _you're not really funny but I'm tolerating you_ smile, his polite smile. His Addison-smile, which is what he called it, _you make me smile like this_ he said to her once, when they were young and stupid and it was all so new.

She doesn't know this smile, sneaking across his lips, cold and unfamiliar when she bends to kiss them when he indicates that she should - a beckoning curl of the fingers, so slight that only she sees it- and his lips are dry against the sensitive skin behind her ear when he speaks.

 _Let's see you lie._

She jerks back, but his left hand, his good hand, grasps her arm with surprising strength. Or maybe she's just weak.

Her sleeve rides up, and Carolyn's eyes catch the marks, bright as an accusation. She looks from her son's gripping fingers to Addison, rooted there like a tree. Shaking in a wind she's not sure she can withstand.

Her mouth still tastes of metal, her throat raw, stomach churning. Her eyes burn with visions of proud fathers leaning into chill glass, drinking in the sight of tiny bald heads and pink toes. Her own hands, pressed into chill glass of a different door. His hands on the other side of it, mirroring her pose. Million dollar hands.

His right hand lies there quietly, taking on a life of its own. His eyes bore into her.

 _Let's see you lie._

She pulls the sleeve back down.

"You drive too fast." she says finally, turning her attention back to her son.

"Not fast enough to get out of the way," he says nonchalantly, and he pats her arm.

His eyes don't leave hers.

* * *

Swelling. Soft tissue injury. Whiplash. Steroids.

These are the words that swarm through her head, blanketing all other thought. His right hand. _Seventy percent_ , they say, like it will ever be enough.

"It's not the end of the world, is it Addie?" he asked brightly when the surgeon told him, a look on the man's face like he was pronouncing time of death.

So this is the way it will go, she realises dully. He will play the generous martyr. She will play the repenting villain. No one else will know. Their own little private drama. It will go on forever.

Because he has the upper hand now. He always will. At least until she tells him the secret she's held close all day _( of course she's sure, she's always sure, isn't she the best? Million dollar hands)_ but she doesn't know if she can. If she should.

She answers the phone in a voice as choked as she feels, and the person on the other end is so rushed, he doesn't even notice it even though he knows her well.

"Richard," she breathes. "No, he's all right."

 _Alive, but I don't know if he can go on living_.

Richard is in Seattle. Across the country. Why is Richard calling?

 _Where were you going, Derek?_

"Oh," she says. "No. No, that's all right. I'll tell him. Thanks for calling."

Seattle. He was going to Seattle.

He was leaving.

It was already decided.

She couldn't have stopped him.

Whose fault is it now?

* * *

 ** _I realise this is uncharacteristically dark for Derek and uncharacteristically docile for Addison._**

 ** _But based on what we saw on the show, the way Derek reacts when his skills fail to save Jen Harmon, and again when the plane crash injured him, I imagined he might react this way._**

 ** _And Addison, she stuck with Derek even when he made her miserable. And again with Sam on PP. So I hope this isn't stretching their characters too much._**

 ** _Also, winter machine, if you're reading... you said a while ago you'd like to see my darker Derek again. Here he is._**

 ** _Please review and let me know what you think!_**


	5. Chapter 5

**_I love all the guesses I've gotten so far... keep them coming!_**

* * *

There's been times she wished she were wrong. She likes to be right, in general. Enjoys it.

But she's never wished as much as she does now that she were wrong.

It's just starting to be morning, night-shift doctors and nurses shuffling away, replaced by their bright-eyed daytime counterparts, curious glances sliding sideways into his room.

Of course they know him. Of course they know her. She's received three compliments on the paper she published last month before she gets to the bathroom down the hall, and it makes her feel a little better, even if it is only for a second before everything got so much worse.

"What?" Nancy asks when she comes back.

"Nothing." she smiles, head spinning. "Nothing."

It's nothing, that's all it can be, because of course she's wrong.

She's never wrong but this time she just has to be.. because there is no way that fate can be this cruel.

What was it Bizzy used to say?

 _People plan, and God laughs._

She did plan. So many plans. Everything was supposed to happen exactly as she wanted it to, pieces clicking neatly into place, a puzzle coming together.

And now, now that she's effectively blown up the puzzle and ruined any chance she ever had of having her dream, the most crucial piece has fallen into place.

"What is it?" Derek presses, eyeing her curiously. This wasn't part of the act; he looks surprised.

"I _said_ ," she grits. "Nothing."

There's an awkward beat of silence before Nancy rises to leave, promising to be back in the evening. She looks almost relieved to be leaving; she feels her last ray of hope dim as she watches her sister in law walk away.

Just them now.

They used to crave these moments. Sneak away every chance they had. Mark said they were telepathic, always finding each other at the right times. Carolyn was less amused, Richard even less so. Savvy said they were nauseating; her mother said they were foolish.

They never cared.

Now, she feels a dullache settle in the pit of her stomach, a chill spreading over her skin. He closes hishis eyes briefly, as if he can't tolerate the thought of being left alone with her.

"Where were you?" His voice is jarring in the silence, and she jumps.

"Bathroom."

"You just went."

"She didn't know that."

"Where were you?"

She stares at him in disbelief. "I told you."

"You told me lots of things, Addison. Most of them aren't true."

"What are you-"

"Is Mark here?" he asks, eyes glittering.

"How can you even-"

"How can I _not_?" he snaps, left hand slamming into the rail.

"Of course not." she returns coolly. "I'm not the one who lies about where I'm going."

They regard each other with icy rage for a heartbeat, and she feels her hands start to shake. She grips the arms of the chair, slightly sticky from God knows what, breathing deeply, trying to calm herself.

"You will not do anything," he says quietly. "That will let anyone know what happened that night."

 _Why not?_

It's a silent scream in her head, ricocheting off her skull, deafening in the blankness of her thoughts.

He seems to see it on her face though, because his mouth curls into the semblance of the smile she used to love. "I think I've earned the right to let them know my way."

"And what would that be?" she bites, shocking herself. He has the upper hand here. But she can't stop herself from reacting, from being unsettled by this man with his hard eyes and cold smile.

"You'll see." he says almost cheerfully. "Now get the hell out of my room."

 ** _.._**

"Hey."

She saw him coming, his reflection in the plate glass small at first, looming larger and larger as he approached, blotting out the image of Derek in her mind.

Derek used to look at her with his eyes so impossibly soft, she'd be weak at the knees. He is the man who brown-bags it with her on top of the Empire State, who proposed to her on a fishing boat, who admits to falling in love over a cadaver, who sang her a song at their wedding. He's the man she's slept next to, made love to, shared her life with, for almost sixteen years...and she no longer recognises him.

"Red."

He's the man she hated at first, avoided when possible, put up with only because Derek seemed inseparable from him. But he grew on her, and she found herself blending into their friendship. The way he blended into their marriage. She feels like he's the _only_ one she recognises right now.

"Talk to me," he pleads, sinking down beside her. A warm cup of coffee and a bagel land in her lap. "How is he?"

"They only had the plain ones," he says after a while. "It's stale. I know you don't like the plain ones, but you need to -"

"He's sleeping." she murmurs, taking a bite. She's lying. He's awake, talking too quietly to be heard on the phone.

"I need to talk to him."

"Mark-" she swallows. "Please."

"He's my friend, Addison." he says, his gaze holding hers. "I deserve-"

 _We don't. Neither of us deserves anything._

"A lat chance," he says. "To apologise."

"Apologise?" she asks, and the tremble in her voice could be anything, fatigue, the soreness she can't shake, the lump of bagel, but it's the shame in his eyes that she can't stand. "Is that all it was to you? Something you need to apologise for?"

"What about you, Addie?" he asks. "Wasn't it just that?"

And as he walks away, she knows with terrifying certainty that she has lost not one, but both.

 _ **..**_

"He's asking for you." the nurse says, judgement in her eyes.

She's been out here all afternoon, stiff from the staright-backed bench, a headache beginning from the glare on the windows.

The day has been a glorious burst of sunshine, the kind that only comes after a thundering rainshower. It's warm outside, humid from the damp ground, and she longs to get up and walk out that door, drown herself in the crowds of people milling about.

"You're here." he says, sounding vaguely surprised.

"You're the one who asked me to be." she says.

"I thought you might have gone." he mutters, punching his pillow with his left hand.

"Where?" she challenges. His answering shrug is infuriating.

"I spoke to Richard." she says pettily. "You're not innocent here."

"I wouldn't have been going if it hadn't been for you." he reminds her, maddeningly calm.

"And I would have done it if you hadn't-"

"Only you, Addison," he shakes his head. "Only you can find a way for _me_ to be somehow responsible for you fucking my best friend-"

She flinches at his language, eyes skating over the bank of monitoring equipment.

"Calm down." she forces herself to say, a hand on his shoulder. "Derek-"

He shrugs her hand off, so casually cruel, leaning back as he steadies his breathing, pushing at her when she brings down the oxygen mask.

"We're all right." she assures the nurse when she comes in, eyebrows raised.

She's never told a bigger lie.

 _Let's see you lie._

"I need you to go in," he pants. "And tell Colbert I'm resigning."

A wave of guilt rushes over her, nausea curling in her throat. She did this.

"We don't know yet that your hand-"

"My hand is none of your business." he tells her. "Bring me the paperwork so I can sign it."

"No way-"

"What's this I hear about your breathing?" Carolyn frowns. "Addie, is he all right?"

"I'm fine, Mom." he smiles pleasantly, releasing the grip he has on her hand, and she quickly hangs up the mask.

"Has Mark been by?" she frowns. " I swear I just saw him-"

"No." Derek says, his gaze swiveling to her. "Has he, Addie?"

 _A last chance._

 _Let's see you lie._

"No." she breathes.

"Hm," Carolyn sighs. "Maybe it just looked like him."

 _ **..**_

"Scans." he says shortly.

" -" the hapless neurologist pleads. "There no-"

"Scans." he repeats icily, and she shudders at the tone, reaching for the folder of scans before he can say more.

He eyes them perfunctorily, holding them up to the light with his good hand. The doctor eyes her uneasily, looks away when she glares back.

No one can know what's going on. She can't let anyone know.

"I want a second opinion." he says finally, giving the scans back to a trembling intern.

"I-" the doctor tries again, falling silent when Nancy clears her throat.

"Addie, where's Archer these days?"

 _ **..**_

"No."

"He can help you." she begs. This is too big a hole to dig herself out of; it will be too hard to convince Nancy that Archer can't come. Even harder to stop her from calling him herself.

"And he can help you." he sneers. "The last person on earth I want to know about any of this is your brother."

"He doesn't have to know."

"It doesn't matter," he frowns. "Even if he doesn't know..."

 _He'll know something's off._

Archer always knows.

"What do I tell Nancy?" she demands, frustrated. Her head is pounding now, from the lack of food and sleep and the constant stress. She feels the ground slipping away underneath her feet, feels herself flailing as everything she takes for granted is turned upside down. Inside out.

"I'm sure you'll think of something." he says, reaching for the cord on his lamp. "You're good at telling lies."

"Derek-"

"Don't be modest."

"I'm not going to just stand here and let you talk to me like-"

"You never could take a compliment." he sighs. "Come on, Addison. How long have you two been screwing behind my back?"

"It was _one_ -"

"It was one time." he mocks, his voice floating high. Higher.

"I meant-"

"That it was _one time_ in our house, Addison? Is that it? Or just _one time_ in our bed?"

"Keep it down in here." Nancy says, looking concerned. Her eyes are narrowed shrewdly, and she seems to be looking at her more than at Derek.

There's no way she could have heard them from the nurses station, which is where she's been, apologising to the rejected physician.

She still feels herself break into a cold sweat, her throat constricting painfully, robbing her of air that's already scarce in the suddenly overheated room. Or maybe it just feels that way to her.

"Addison." Nancy says.

She can't have heard. If she's heard, it's over.

 _Let's see you lie._

Amy kept the secret. She smiled, knowing, sly, when she slammed open the door to Mark's office, tossed her hair jauntily as they dropped their hands, smoothed mussed hair, caught their breath.

 _I won't tell of you won't_ she says; she found a tiny plastic packet of pills in the purse Amy had borrowed last week later that day.

She didn't tell.

They haven't seen or spoken to Amy for months.

" _Addison._ " Nancy repeats, her voice urgent.

 _Let's see you lie._

"Addison!" he says, and the last thing she sees is his face, grimacing in pain as he leans forward, hand outstretched, calling her name.

* * *

 ** _So I've always wondered what the hell Amelia saw, if Addison insisted that the time in the brownstone was the first._**

 ** _And I've always thought Addison's dedication to Amelia on PP was admirable; she'd divorced Derek years ago by then, and Amelia wasn't exactly appreciative, so maybe there's a story there._**

 ** _And since I'm a sucker for NY backstory...I came up with this. More on that later._**

 ** _How's Derek? Dark enough?_**

 ** _Review and let me know!_**


	6. Chapter 6

**_So I have a couple chapters saved up from a writing spree last weekend - I'll be putting them up as time permits. So I won't disappear, and you won't forget me completely._**

* * *

"You need to-"

"Don't tell me what I need to do." she snaps at the young intern; he retreats, looking hurt, and she feels momentary flash of regret. He's just doing his job. It's just that he's shy and nervous and the most logical target in the room for her rage.

She rips the cuff from her arm, watching the numbers die on the screen. Nancy glares at her as she slides off the examination table, hunting for her shoes.

"Addison Shepherd, what the hell is going on?" she demands as the babyfaced intern leaves the room at a forcedly slow pace.

"Nothing." she says with exaggerated calm. "BP's normal, blood sugars' normal, I'm just a little dehydrated."

"From puking your guts out?" she hisses back, and they stare at each other, each willing the other to back down. She knows that Nancy knows. It's their job to know.

It's just that until she admits it, it isn't real and she doesn't want it to be real because it would push this nightmare over the knife-edge of reality she's clinging desperately to.

"You need to - " she exhales frustratedly, running her fingers through her dark hair. "Addie. If you're - you need to slow down. Take care of yourself, for the -"

 _Baby?_

It doesn't feel like a baby. It feels like a cold lump of terror inside of her, conceived in coldness and nurtured on wine and stolen cigarettes. She should be happy, glowing, proud. Excited. All she feels is sheer, white-hot fear instead.

It must have been...three months ago? It was hot and still that night, the air thick and sticky on her skin. She slept in an old t-shirt of his, he didn't bother with one. It was the first time in weeks that they went to bed at the same time, too tired to talk, silent, in their own worlds. She doesn't remember who intiated it; it might have been her, when she caught his eyes, held them with her own. It might have been him, when he kissed her, hard, like he was forcing her to remember.

He was gone the next morning, and that evening she kissed Mark as the heat broke in waves of rain, cascading against the windows of his office, muffling the sound of Amy's footsteps.

 _Just a kiss_ she told herself. Just a kiss.

They avoided each other for weeks, circling around each other in a blatant dance that Derek never noticed.

Amy left two weeks after that. Another secret she keeps. She flushed the pills she found down the toilet, dropping them in one by one. The ones from her root canal. The ones from Derek's shoulder sprain. She thought he'd thrown them out. She never asked.

She never told.

She lets a hand glance over her belly, lets herself imagine. A baby. What would that mean?

..

"Where have you two been?" Carolyn frowns, looking askance at them. "Addison, dear, are you all right?"

She looks alarmed now, rising to brush a cool hand against her clammy skin. The concern in her eyes turns her stomach.

 _I don't deserve you._

"She's fine." Nancy says brusquely. "I thought you went home."

"I came back." she says easily. Of course she did. He's her golden boy. He can do no wrong.

She knows, now, what Amy means when she calls herself the black sheep. She feels blacker than black right now, because this time, he has truly done nothing wrong. It wasn't his fault that she's a cheater who threw their vows away like so much trash. It wasn't his fault that Amrk was there, it wasn't his fault that she's weak, that she seeks fleeting pleasure to numb her pain. It wasn't his fault that he came home early that night. It wasn't his fault that he walked in on them.

Nothing that happened afterward was strictly his fault either. And now someone is dead and he may never operate again and Mark is eyeing her like she might explode and her stomach is knotting itself into ever-smaller twists.

 _What now?_

She feels the secrets swell inside her, her betrayal and Amy and the baby. She feels like she might burst like a dam, spilling them for everyone to hear. Carolyn wouldn't be brushing back her hair, then, and Nancy - Nancy who knows something is off, but surely not exactly - wouldn't be whispering comforting words in her ear.

Mark. He's the only one who knows, and he's the only one not looking at her. He's looking at Derek, past the glass, through a gap in the uninspiring gray block-patterned curtains.

And Derek is looking back, and then his hand - the left, of course, and she's swallowed by a fresh wave of guilt - moves, beckoning him inside.

..

"When are you going to tell him?"

She knows. Of course she knows. She doesn't send her OB consults to her for no reason. She's good.

Another weight on her chest, crushing the air from her lungs. Nancy is flush with excitement, pictures of ultrasound scans and quaint announcements dancing in her eyes. One more person she has to disappoint.

"Oh, cmon, Addie." she whispers, her arm tight around her shoulders. She used to marvel at how easily they touched each other, the Shepherd sisters, their hair, jewelry, clothes, quick hugs, kisses. Casual displays of love that she'd never known. They swirled her into their whirlwind as well, and she delighted in every moment. Bizzy would think she'd lost her mind if she hugged her. Archer would complain she was ruining his outfit. The Captain - if he were ever around - would clear his throat gruffly and hurry away.

So she soaked in every bit. The shopping trips, the clothes sharing. The gossiping and the confidences. She watched their babies grow on screens, delivered them, babysat them. _We have time_ she'd think with each squirming new addition. _There's still time._

There's no time now, and if she spills her truth, this is what she stands to lose. What her - _their_ \- baby stands to lose. Because if she's sure of one thing, it's that Derek will love this child. He's that man. He will want this baby.

What he doesn't want is her. She imagines herself shut out, dropping off her child at an unfamiliar home every weekend, holidays maybe. Returning to an empty house, footsteps echoing in the chill air. A faceless woman creeps into the picture, standing beside Derek, mothering her child. Strangely, she is alone in this fantasy. Always, achingly, alone.

And so she lies. She will do what Derek wants- because she owes him, because she's too weak to admit the truth, because she's too greedy for this love, because she cannot stand to be left alone. She lies.

..

"What did he say?" she asks, hating how desperate she sounds. "Mark."

He looks blank, shell-shocked. "Nothing."

"Mark, please-"

"Addison." he says, his face carefully expressionless. "I can't do this. I don't understand how you can...but I can't."

"Wh-" she stutters, reeling. They've been talking for a while, maybe ten minutes. She has no idea what Derek has said, but the way Mark looks at her...she shivers a little under his icy gaze.

"How can you lie?" he snaps. "Look at them-" he gestures to Carolyn dozing with her head on Lizzie's shoulder. She smiles at them, eyes closing. She dragged her down to the cafeteria, made her eat what might have been cardboard or pasta for lunch. She tried to make her go home, get some rest. She kissed her pounding head.

She said _it's going to be okay, dear._

"How can you lie to them?" he asks of her again, fingers digging into her sore arms. "I can't. You do it, you tell them, any way you want. Or-" She's never seen him look so torn, so anguished. "-So help me, _I_ will."

He smiles when he sees her.

"I take it you've spoken to Mark." he says as she pulls the curtains shut. Double checks the door.

"I wish you'd done that last night." he says, looking amused. "Maybe I might have kept my eyesight."

"What did you tell Mark."

Her voice is flat with undeserved rage, trembling with the effort of keeping it low. She understands now, this game he's playing. This sick joke. This completely justified and utterly cruel revenge. Turning the ones who betrayed him against each other.

He raises an eyebrow at her tone. "Nothing."

"Derek Christopher Shepherd-"

"Don't." his eyes flash. "You don't get to ask questions anymore."

"Who the hell do you think you are-"

"So go ahead." he shrugs. "Tell them. Stop the lies. Tell them how you fucked my best friend in my bed, Addison, go ahead. While you're at it, tell them everything else. Where I was going, and why, and maybe everywhere else you two have been doing it, and everyone else you've been screwing-"

"Really, Derek?" she says, forcing her words past the heartbeat hammering in her throat. "While I'm at it, maybe I'll tell them I'm pregnant, too."

* * *

 ** _Too dark? Derek's like chocolate in this story- darker the better._**

 ** _I'm having some twisted fun here._**

 ** _Anyway, let me know what you think._**

 ** _Also, more about Amy next time. Promise._**


	7. Chapter 7

**_Are yall still reading?_**

* * *

Of course he asked. He had to. Anyone in his right mind would ask.

 _Is it mine?_ he asked, barely more than a whisper. He can't look at her, or won't look at her, because he knows the answer. That doesn't hurt. She deserves it.

What hurts is that he doesn't want it to be true. It would be easier if it weren't his. Then she'd be the villain, and he'd be the innocent victim.

But it is his, and he knows it. She lets silence fall between them, lets him interpret it.

"How far along?" he asks after a long pause.

"Three months, about." she answers, rocking back on her heels. She wonders if he remembers that night in screaming, vivid detail the way she does. Every kiss, every touch, every ragged breath. Gripping too tightly, holding on, like they knew this was the last time.

He spins the soft yellow ball PT left for him, indenting the surface with a finger. Digging deeper, his fingernail piercing the surface, exposing the foam. He doesn't stop, tearing into it until it's shredded in fluffs of white, scattering across the bed, floating across the floor.

She watches in silence, even when he hurls the remains of the ball against the wall with his good hand, his eyes bright.

"Mark."

He looks up slowly, like he dreads conversation. "Did you do it?"

"What did Derek say to you?" She steps across the doorway of the waiting room as he gets up, an expression painfully close to revulsion crossing his face.

"Enough." he replies, so close to her she can feel welcome heat rising from his skin. She shivers involuntarily, and sees his arms twitch like he might put them around her. He doesn't.

" _What did he tell you_."

He looks taken aback at her tone, an unbecoming mix of anger and desperation. "Addison, you can do it, or I will - we're not going to stand here and pretend everything's all right, we can't lie to them-"

"He lied." she says. "Derek lied to you, whatever he said-"

"And now you're doing it? Is that it?"

He pushes past her into the hallway, and she's limp against the frame, no resistance at all.

 _Let me show you how sorry I am_.

"Mark." she calls after him. "Whatever he said, it wasn't true."

 ** _.._**

"You'd think you were in that car too." Carolyn murmurs, her finger raking through Addison's lank hair. The first time she did that, nearly fifteen years ago, when Addison fell asleep on the porch swing at the Shepherds house, it nearly brought tears to her eyes. Her fingers are rough from years of work and children, soothing against her scalp. She lets her tuck her hair behind her ears before she sits up in the chair.

They all left in the afternoon, Nancy and Liz going back to their practices and their children and the husband's they lived and didn't cheat on, Carolyn went home, Mark went home. She stayed, stiff in the chair beside his bed, watching him breathe.

She must, at some point, have fallen asleep,because when she wakes Carolyn and Mark are standing in front of her, concerned.

"Mark,"Carolyn says now. "I'll stay, you take her home. I don't think she's left since they got here - have you, dear?"

She doesn't wait for an answer, picking up Addison's phone and keys, pressing then into her palm, actually closing her fingers around then like she's not sure she'll grasp.

Her hands linger at her wrists, squeezing. "I'll take care of him."

 ** _.._**

He steals her car keys, situating himself firmly in the drivers seat before she can summon a protest.

"One of you crashing their car is enough." Mark says gruffly; he doesn't speak again until they're on the steps of their brownstone. She unlocks the first door, one hand pressed to the cold glass. She lets herself in.

Mark follows, silent, stopping at the foot of the stairs. She kissed him here, pushed the jacket off his shoulders.

 _Are you sure?_ he panted. _Addie. Are you sure?_

She didn't say anything, kissed him harder and dragged him up the stairs, dragged him down with her.

"I'll wait here." he says, carefully, looking everywhere but at her.

"Mark -"

"Go."

 ** _.._**

She finds his jacket with the heap of her rain-soaked clothes, extricates it, wondering if the leather has been ruined. She strips off her wrinkled jeans and shirt, runs a bath.

Hot water isn't good, not now that she's ... pregnant.

Her baby. Their baby. She touches her abdomen, wondering if the baby can feel it. Does it hate her already? She's a scientist, she likes hard facts, she knows it's impossible. Her baby is a tiny human replica, completely dependant on her for survival. It has no feelings, no emotion. She believes that life starts at birth. She says that so many times, to the reporters outside the clinics and the red-faced picketers and the terrified women.

But this is _her baby_. She and Derek made this together, half her and half him and she may have ruined everything but nothing can change this- she will always be linked to Derek, because this child is both of theirs.

Her hands shake when she opens the cabinet under the sink knocking aside boxes of tampons she should have remembered earlier, searching for the leftovers of a scare a few years ago.

Was it a scare? Did she wanwant it to be positive? She still doesn't know. She was just about to start her fellowship at Sinai, two years of the most rigorous, grueling work in her career. She never even told Derek, bought the tests on her way home because she didn't want to take one at the hospital. Everyone knows them there.

They must be at the very back, she rationalises, no one uses this bathroom. They haven't had anyone stay here since Amy and she never bothered to move the tests then; Amy could be counted on to keep a secret. She finds a pink razor that must be Amy's, boxes of tissues she doesn't remember buying, soap and shampoo she doesn't use. She doesn't remember cleaning out this cupboard since Amy left, so that makes sense.

She finds a metal box, rusted around the corners, and wishes she hadn't opened it. A spoon, a lighter, rubber tubing and a syringe she cringes away from.

She adds it to her list of sins and sets it aside. Nancy. She'll tell Nancy. She'll know what to do.

Some secrets shouldn't be kept.

She finds what she's looking for in a heap at the very back.

She used three last time, lining them up on the bathroom counter, closing her eyes. She didn't even know what to pray for, because she didn't know what she wanted them to say.

They were negative in the end, and she heaved a sigh of...relief? and was immediately ashamed of herself. She saw the way Derek held Kath's newborn son, the way he smiled. He was so happy. She wanted to make him that happy.

But they were negative and she hid the other three under the sink - if they'd been positive she'd have taken those too, just to be sure - and she never told Derek.

Now, though, as she lines them up again, flopping onto the bed in the guest room because she _cannot_ face the master bedroom, not after what they did therethere - she knows what they will say.

 ** _.._**

"Jesus, Addison." he barks, his voice moving away from her. She feels the bed indent at the end like he's set something down on it, sitting up, slightly disoriented for a moment. She can hear water running somewhere. He's left her a tray, a mug of tea. A grilled cheese sandwich - Mark's entire repertoire - filling the air with the warm golden decent of cheese and butter. Her stomach roils, and she ducks into the bathroom.

He's there. Turning off the water, which is by now sloshing over the lip of the tub, soaking their feet and the mess she's left on the floor.

But he's not looking at her or the flood of bathwater or the sodden cardboard boxes or even the metal box of drug paraphernalia that makes her heart skip a beat.

He's looking at the line of little white sticks, each with two pink lines. Like she knew they would be.

"What was that you were saying?" he asks haltingly, swallowing to moisten his throat. "About Derek lying to me?"

 ** _.._**

He makes her get dressed before she comes downstairs, pointedly averting his eyes. Then he makes her sit at the island in the kitchen, shoving the food under her nose.

She hasn't eaten since she emptied the contents of her stomach in a cabernet-hued mess into a hospital toilet, but she still can't bring herself to swallow.

"What did he say to you?" she asks, taking a tentative sip of tea instead. It's mint, calming her twisting stomach. She takes another sip.

"He said there were - others." he replies softly. He seems ... stunned, by the realisation of what Derek is doing. "He said I want the only one, that you -" he breaks off. "It was different for me. You were different. Wasn't just a game."

"Others?"

"You know." he laughs bitterly. "At the hospital, at the practice. He said he knew all along, bit he didnt have proof. He asked me if I was really this stupid, he said he was -"

"Mark."

"He was lying, Addie, he didn't mean it, he's angry. He won't mean it, not now that you're ... you're having his kid, Red. He won't."

How easily he believes in her, trusts her. There's not a shadow of doubt in his mind whose child it is. She doesn't deserve him.

"What did he say, Mark."

"He said he was leaving you, he was done with you sleeping around, and he asked me too -" he leans forward then, taking her hand. She senses it's an apology, for what's coming. "He asked me to come clean, and he'd have proof you were cheating."

She's watching the water swirl down the drain as she wraps the tests in toilet paper. She'll throw them away. She's not sentimental about things like that.

She doesn't hear him come in behind her, footsteps silent as a cats. She hears the squeak of rusted metal hinges, turning to find him winding the rubber tubing through his fingers.

"That's -" she starts to explain, blood rushing in her ears. All her secrets seem to be escaping, like Pandora's box, hurting everyone she loves.

"Amy's." he says heavily. "I know."

* * *

 ** _Okay, so Derek is awful here. I know. I promise it won't always be this bad._**

 ** _And honestly, isn't this gun? I personally hated the golden boy McDreamy crap they fed us almost all of the time, so this is a welcome change for me, and also what I believe Derek really was. He was vindictive towards Addison when she first arrived in Seattle, he made sure everyone knew what she'd done, he did his best to discredit her personally, he made sure she didn't have any friends._**

 ** _Anyway, enough rambling. Please review!_**


	8. Chapter 8

**_Remember, it's Addek endgame, so don't go crawling up my pants screaming about how I'm ruining it. I deleted one particularly gushing guest review where the reviewer suggested I go do something very graphic and possibly physically impossible to myself if I didn't want to put them together._**

 ** _And no, Meredith will not pop out of the woodwork and make Derek fall in love with her. It isn't a MerDer fic. No. So to the other deleted guest reviewer who said I needed my ass_ _kicked - up yours._**

 ** _To the sweet lovely people who leave actual reviews and constructive criticism instead of venom and vitriol, thank you, I love you, and please don't stop reading!_**

* * *

She realises how much she's numbed herself this past year only when she can't keep swallowing the poison any longer, each word cutting deep the way they never do when she's comfortably cushioned with alcohol, feeling more than she wants to.

But she doesn't exactly feel sober either, she's somewhere in that dark sweaty heart-thumping territory she's only ever been in a few times, in college, tumbling off the sharp edge of a high, unsure where she'll stop. If she'll stop.

"Addison." Mark says, concerned, his fingers clenching her elbow. "You look -"

"It's nothing." she says lightly, swallowing saliva, her throat sandpapery. They're in an elevator that smells of body odor and the metal tinge of blood under a smog of disinfectant; it's the elevator going up from the ER, and she wonders if someone died in it. She looks at the floor. No stain.

That doesn't mean nothing happened here, though. Things can happen that shatter your world and ruin your life and not leave so much as a scar behind.

"I can't believe he said that." Mark is muttering now, his anger almost comical. Two hours ago he was ready to believe every lie Derek could think up. Now he's playing the knight in shining armor.

Their roles are all mixed up, she thinks. Mark's usually the one in the wrong, the one most likely to have pissed everyone off. Derek is the righteous knight, defending whoever is on Mark's receiving end, usually a sobbing blonde ex. And she's the mediator, tempering their explosively different personalities.

They got along fine before her though. They were great, without her.

What if she hadn't met them? What if she'd gone to Hopkins like her father thought she should? What if she'd taken the afternoon lab? What if she'd been assigned to another table, another cadaver instead of Mr. Mulligan?

Would they still be here? A minor hiccup in time, one pulled thread, and everything could have been so _different_.

But here they are, she reflects sadly. One broken, one pregnant and one so disillusioned she's not sure he'll ever speak to either of them again.

 _ **..**_

"Why'd you do it?" Mark demands, as subtle as he's ever been. Which is to say, about as subtle as an atom bomb.

"Why are you here?" Derek groans, his arm slung over his eyes. He's been medicated, but he's always reluctant with medications and his concussion means he's had splitting headaches since he woke up.

Add that his arm, his leg and the healing incision from the laparotomy, and he's downright unpleasant. She wishes she could pick up the PCA and jab the button as many times as it will let her, but that would probably make him hate her more than he already does.

If that's even possible.

"Because you can't do stuff like that and get away with it." Mark snarls, kicking the bed squarely; Derek sits up as best he can, enraged.

"Get out."

"Like hell I will. Why'd you do it?"

He doesn't bother ask which it, just frowns and pushes at Mark. "I don't have to explain myself to either one of you."

"You can't do that to her. To _me._ "

"And what about what you did to me?" Derek asks, his voice glacial. "How long have you been screwing each other behind my back?"

She finds her voice somewhere in the pit of her stomach and forces it past trembling lips and heavy tongue. "I told you -"

" _It was one time._ " he mimics her voice. "Yeah, I heard you."

"It was." she insists. She hates the note of pleading in her voice, the thin stretch of desperation.

 _I knew this would get said, it's what always gets said -_

"It was enough, though." Derek says, his lips curling in disgust. "You can keep her." he addresses Mark. "If you want to."

And add a cut lip to the list, which makes him absolutely insufferable.

 _ **..**_

"You shouldn't have." she mutters. It's what she says when someone brings flowers, or something equally unwelcome. _You shouldn't have_ , the universal code for _why the fuck did you._

She presses the slippery blue gel pack to his rapidly swelling hand, envisioning the inflamed tendons and bruised tissue. At this rate, with Derek's whiplash and her wrists and Mark's possibly broken metacarpal, none of them are going to be operating. The Chief might actually kill all three of them.

"Felt good." he grunts, trying not to wince when she gently manipulates the bones, trying to dredge up her long forgotten Ortho rotation.

"Not broken." she decides, since he wouldn't let himself be taken down to Radiology for an X ray. After Security was done with him. In fact, what with all the yelling and doctor-firing and vomiting and punching, they're probably the most hated patient on the floor. _That_ patient, the one who plays the call button like a piano and likes to talk about his bowels on morning rounds and ask for massages, the one residents always reserve for the most annoying intern, is probably better than them.

"You can't let him talk to you like that." Mark says gruffly, tossing the ice pack aside.

"I know." she deadpans. "He's sort of my husband. Has been, for eleven years."

"And still you can't get him in line." Mark mocks softly. "Addison, I'm serious. I don't know what the fuck he's hopped up on or if that Neanderthal neurologist did miss something on his CT, but that's not Derek. Derek, as you know, is the golden boy. He just doesn't _do_ shit like this. You have to talk to him."

"I will."

"He knows? About the baby?" Mark asks, his eyes closing briefly.

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

"Nothing." she replies when the silence starts to stretch uncomfortably long.

"Talk to him."

"I _will_."

"When?"

"Now?"

"You always were brave. Or stupid, I don't know."

"Shut up."

She slides reluctantly off the chair, walking to the door they've left open so no one can suspect anything.

"Addie?"

She turns back to him, lying on a stained waiting room couch with his hand bruising brilliant shades of purple.

"It wasn't a game, just so you know." he pauses, something like shame clouding his slate eyes.

"With you, it was never a game."

 _ **..**_

"And you're back." he sighs, observing her through eyes that used to twinkle. "Don't you get tired of it?"

"Don't you?" she quips, and he falls silent, evidently not expecting this response.

"I'll tell everyone, if that's what you want." she says heavily, the words pushing down on her chest until she can't breathe from fear. Of course, that's what he wants. He wants everyone to know what an adulterous bitch she is. "Mark agrees."

"How...cooperative of Mark."

"We're sorry."

"Yes, you are." he agrees.

"For everything."

"You _could_ have locked the door." Derek muses. "Or, you know, done it in his bed. So I'd still have my favorite sheets to convalesce on."

"The flannel sheets aren't your favorite sheets." she says automatically, eleven years of domesticity rearing its well-practiced, weary head.

"I love the flannel sheets."

"No, you like the Italian sheets, with the paisleys-"

"Flannel."

"Paisleys."

"Flannel, because -"

"Paisleys-"

"-because you like them." he finishes, looking surprised that he's said it at all. "You said they remind you of Christmas and Christmas makes you happy so I like the flannel."

"And they're soft." he says after a while, when she's pretending to not be wiping her eyes on her sleeve. "And warm. Addie. Look at me."

She can't. She can't, because this is _her_ Derek, her adorably nervous lab partner and her steadfastly constant life partner, her fairytale turned nightmare, and if she looks at him now with his eyes so soft, his voice warm, it will only be that much harder when he goes back to the icy sneering Derek of the last two days.

"I'm sorry." she croaks yet again. It's possible that the word has by now lost all meaning, a hollow sound she makes every so often, hoping for a little forgiveness.

"Me too." he says, his good hand on hers. "I'm sorry too."

The thing about Derek Christopher Shepherd is...you never see it coming. You never imagine that he could be the boy who hurts you, willfully, deliberately, the boy who doesn't hear the _no_ or the boy who doesn't stop. He's just not that person. He's the oerson who opens doors and pulls chairs for her.

And that makes it hurt even worse when he does do something so willfully, deliberately cruel that it rips her heart out, even though she deserves it.

But what hurts even worse is when he apologises, when his eyes are so sincere and his voice so kind she half believes him when she shouldn't. She can't, actually, because she has no way of knowing he won't do it again.

She can't trust him anymore.

Which is rich, because she's the one who did the betraying.

"I shouldn't have said what I did." he continues, his thumb tracing the rises and dips of her knuckles. "It was cruel. Inexcusable, really, but I wasn't thinking, I was...scared."

He tilts her chin up with two fingers like he always does, gently firm. "I thought...when I walked into the house, you know, I knew. That jacket he's always wearing-" he chuckles, his hand returning to hers. They've discussed this many a time, wondering if there's a story - a girl? - behind the ever present leather jacket.

"It was on the floor, by the stairs, and I'd know it anywhere. That jacket, and I knew I hadn't just lost my wife, I'd lost my best friend too, and I can't tell you how much that hurt because I don't have anything to compare it to, because Addie, I swear -" He shakes his head at her when she opens her mouth, his face blurring in a haze of tears. "I know I've been a terrible husband and a horrible friend, this last year, and I thought you'd finally had enough... I thought I'd lost you both, and I...lashed out, I didn't _want_ to need you, I didn't want it to hurt, so when it did-"

"You hurt back." she murmurs, salt on her lips as she brushes them against his damp cheek. "I know. I deserved it."

"But so did I." he murmurs as he draws back, a little quickly, but still touching her lip, brushing away the moisture. "I deserved it too, because I've been hurting all of you, all year, but when I did that, the one person who doesn't deserve any of this gets hurt, our baby gets hurt, and I might be the world's worst husband but I'm not going to let myself be a bad _father_."

And there it is, the catch. She should have known.

Anyway, she deserves it.

* * *

 ** _Too sweet? Maybe just a little, to help with the dark. Like I said, it's chocolate._**

 ** _Can I have some reviews? Cause those are even BETTER than chocolate._**


	9. Chapter 9

Promises. Oaths. Vows. Easy to make, harder to break.

She didn't want to. She loved Derek - _loves_ Derek - right up to the bitter end. What happened with Mark was a horrific lapse of judgement, one that may well have cost her her marriage.

But she did it, didn't she? The vows they took eleven years ago, in front of their families and friends, the vows that bound then together _till death do us part_ , that meant they would be together for better or for worse, she slipped from them so easily, they fell away like snipped thread.

And now she's loosened, unmoored. Alone. At this time, when they should have been together and closer than ever, she is alone. She deserves it, she _knows_ she deserves it, but it does nothing to soothe the aching loneliness.

She keeps her head down and tries not to look. All the other women have husbands, partners, with them; they sit awkwardly in Nancy's waiting room. Some of them rest hands on their wives swollen bellies, a mixture of terror nd elation. Some look uncertain. Some look casual.

But they're _there._ And she is alone.

"Addison?" says an incredulous voice. She looks up at the familiar round face of ...Mabel? Myrtle? Nancy's receptionist. She looks surprised to see her sitting there, her eyes automatically darting to her midsection.

"Oh, dear. Does she have a lunch date I haven't penciled in? Why didn't you _tell_ me you were dropping in?" she asks, flustered, fluttering. Mabel/Myrtle sits down in the empty chair beside her, resting a soft hand on her knee, lowers her voice conspiratorially.

"Or is there finally going to be a Shepherd baby? I've always said you'd make some pretty ones." she winks. She's worked here as long as Nancy has, she has been privy to many a lunch date. She's met Addison, she's met Derek, she knows all the Shepherd siblings and the assorted spouses and offspring.

"Mitzi, stop annoying Addison." Nancy calls mock-sternly from the door of her office. "Hi, Addie. Come in."

..

She's been on the other side of this too many times to even count, but the feeling is always the same. The flicker of excitement, the anticipation. The relief of seeing a healthy fetus on the ultrasound, the pleasure of watching expectant parents cry with joy.

This side feels different. This side feels cold, and lonely, it feels like every mistake she's ever made weighing on her, it feels like karma.

"I'll bet Derek's freaking out over there in his bed." Nancy says cheerily, snapping on gloves. She's never realised just how ominous that sound is, the snap of latex against skin. She'll try not to be so loud. "I'm surprised he didn't haul himself here anyway."

 _Oh, Nancypants...what do you know?_

"Addie." she says, serious. "I'm asking this as your sister for the last time. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." she smiles. It's so easy to smile. Smile, and you dissolve the obligation people feel to ask questions. Smile, and you take away their power to hurt you. "Great."

"Annnd...so is Baby Shepherd." Nancy smiles, sliding the probe over her abdomen. "Gosh. You have no idea how long I've waited for this moment, Ad. I mean, Derek's baby. My baby brother's baby. It's just-"

She breaks off, shaking her head. Her eyes are bright, and she looks at Addison. "When are you telling everyone? We could all do with some good news right now."

"Not yet." she says quickly. "Nance, please don't."

"I wouldn't unless you wanted me to." Nancy replies, eyes narrowing. "But you're twelve weeks along, everything looks good."

"We want to wait." she answers simply. Nancy will listen; she is her truest ally in the sea of Shepherds.

..

"Do you have it?" Derek asks eagerly. It's the most energetic she's seen him this week, and it's hardly surprising.

He's always wanted a baby. _Four_ , he used to tease her. He wanted two of each, little boys to rough house with and little girls to spoil. He grew upnin a big family and wanted to recreate it for himself. She grew up in silence, and didn't want to repeat it.

Children were always a given. When they bought the brownstone, they smiled at each other as the realtor prattled about how the smaller guest bedroom would be the perfect nursery; the Hamptons house has too many rooms for the two of them. She's thought about names.

She just didn't think it would be like this.

"Of course," she says, handing him the envelope. He shakes out the printed scans, and his expression softens as he looks at the black and white blur.

"She's perfect." he states.

"How do you know it's a girl?" she asks, sitting down since he doesn't seem to be about to ask her to.

"I'm just guessing." he shrugs. "And it's not really my thing..." he gestures to the ultrasound. "But I do have a medical degree."

"That you do."

"I might not be using it anytime soon," he says flippantly. "But I can still read."

"Nice to know."

"What's with you?" he frowns.

"Nothing."

"Really? If you're going to be so passive-aggressive, Addison, give me a hint what its about."

"If you don't know what's it's about, there is no point explaining." she says evenly.

"Then don't."

"I wasn't going to."

"Good -" he stops short, squinting at the piece of paper that slides out of the scan envelope. The prescription Nancy wrote her for vitamins, something to help her nausea. She absolutely forbade her to self - medicate; she's insistent on delivering the baby too.

"You went to _Nancy_ ?"

"She's an excellent OB."

"And an excellent gossip." he snaps. "Jesus, Addison, my great-aunt knows you're pregnant by now."

"Your great aunt's dead." she replies dully.

"Exactly my point."

"What's your point?" Mark asks, strolling in. "You actually have one?"

"Get out." Derek says.

"Unlikely." Mark grins. His insolence is breathtaking; it's annoying and exhilarating all at once. She's never been able to goad Derek like that, she always gives in when he starts yelling.

Mark's eyes drift to the scan Derek is still holding, and for a moment there's silence.

"That the peanut?" he says easily after a while, as if nothing has happened, as if they are still AddisonandDerek and Mark, as if this is a joyous moment and any second now someone will ask Mark to be godfather.

(They did discuss it; it's always seemed unlikely that Mark will ever get married or have his own family, and once you get over his debauched lifestyle, he's a pretty good guy."

Except they're not, they're Derek and Addison and Mark, and it's not a happy moment and she feels her head spinning, bile rising in her throat. It's so wrong, the three of them caught in this tangled web. This baby, caught in their crossfire.

"Are you out of your mind?" Derek inquires. "Do you think you can really sit here and chat about my child, Mark, after what you-"

"He was just leaving." she says quickly. "Mark."

"Nah, I'll stay." Mark grins, making himself comfortable. "Took half the day off, canceled my date. I'm staying."

 _Date._

He had a date.

She's _married._

The word makes her want to scream, it makes her want to fling herself off a roof, because here she is pregnant and about to be divorced, and here's the reason she's thrown away her whole marriage, going on a _date._

She never wanted Mark. Even in the early days, of nascent friendships and nebulous loyalties, she wanted Derek. Mark grated on her at first, his constant innuendo, the childish behavior, his whole persona. Derek was at wits end for a while; _I need both of you_ he confessed once.

But then they settled down and go used to one another; she saw the steadfast loyalty under his superficiality. They were friends, apart from Derek, their relationship evolved, grew until it didn't depend on him. Honestly, if she had broken up with Derek, she would have remained friends with Mark.

And then _friends_ turned into something else, somewhere along the way, at dinner tables with one empty chair, on weekends with Derek's family but no Derek, on a couch with the middle cushion bare, except for a bowl of popcorn. Mark was always there when Derek couldn't - wouldn't - be.

And still, that night when she flung that wet leather jacket to the floor - so careless - when she pressed herself against him, kissed him, she felt nothing except the blood rushing in her ears, her heart flinging itself against her ribs.

 _Stopstopstopstop._

But she didn't stop. Mark did; he grabbed her by the shoulders, breath heavy on her neck, _are you sure_?, and she nodded and then Derek was there and now they're all here.

The nurse bustles in, smiling, Derek slides the scan under his pillow.

"Nice to see you all here." she smiles. She's old, maybe Carolyn's age, motherly . "Friend of yours?"

"No." Derek says, at the same time she says yes.

The nurse blinks in confusion; Mark clears his throat.

"What he means is I'm like his brother." Mark explains. "Grew up together, and all that."

..

"Are. You. Insane." she hisses, punctuating each word with a stab to Mark's chest. With her finger, but she wouldn't mind if it were a scalpel.

"Are you trying to get him to snap?" she demands. "I told you not to come back? Mark, this is our mess. Let me deal with it."

"We grew up together." Mark repeats. "I've known him thirty three years."

"So?"

"How long have _you_ known him, Addie? No -" he holds up a hand to silence her. "You're married to him, whatever. I know parts of Derek you've never even seen, Addison. I've seen him do, and say, things you wouldn't believe. This isn't the same man you married, and as long as I can, I'm goimg to be here making sure he doesn't-"

" _Hurt_ me? Derek would never." she says, furious. He is her husband of eleven years, her partner of far longer. She knows beyond doubt that he would never-

"Yeah?" Mark sneers. "What, did he get you a glass of wine after I left that night and offer to talk about your feelings?"

She's silent. That was the only time, in their relationship of almost twenty years, that she was afraid. The blank rage in his eyes, the iron grip on her hands. She struggled but it was useless, she was barely more than limp in his arms as he shoved her out of their home.

"I thought so." Mark laughs mirthlessly. "That's the way he was. I knew him then - you didn't. I'm not about to leave you alone with him."

"You're...you're being ridiculous." she breathes. "We're talking about _Derek_."

"Losing your father at thirteen - getting his brains blown all over your face - getting bullied in high school for being an overweight know-it-all band geek do not a saint make." Mark says, patting her hand. "I sound dramatic? Let's see those hands, Red, come on. Tell me - tell me you've never been the teensiest bit worried."

* * *

 ** _Well, I did say it would be dark. Dark Derek is something they glossed over on the show - his uncontrolled, violent reactions to occasions when things don't go his way, like when he catches Addison with Mark, when Jen Harmon dies, the way he treats interns (Lexie!), punching Mark. I think he had a difficult childhood, and the show never brought that up even though they've hashed over Meredith's myriad Mommy/Daddy issues too many times to count._** ** _So, that's what I think. I'd love to hear about what you think, maybe in... a review?_**


	10. Chapter 10

**_And finally, I have updated. Feels like it's been ages._**

* * *

Mark's words have left her cold, standing alone in an empty room that reeks of loneliness and despair. This is the room where desperate families wait, where they hope and pray that their loved one lives another day.

This is the room where she stands as she falls slowly to pieces, as everything she thought she knew turns upside down.

Derek ...is gentle. He is kind, he is caring, he is incredibly compassionate and dedicated, fiercely loyal. He always does the right thing. He is generous and he is fair.

But she knows him - his urge to do the right thing can be destructive because he lets nothing stand in his way. To him, collateral damage is nothing as long as he achieves his ends.

Failure is not something he is accustomed to; it throws him for a loop, sends him into tailspins of rage. He likes to be the best, it's part of why he is so successful, but that same quality turns on him because he cannot bear coming second. He is relentlessly focused, and he sometimes sees nothing but what he wants. He can be selfish when it suits him to be.

But he's still her husband, her Derek, the Derek she married, twinkle-eyed and sweet and loving. He would never hurt her. That night with Mark, after he caught them, that was an exception. He must have been stunned, so hurt, betrayed. She ruined their marriage, burnt it to the ground in the most cruel way possible, right in front of Derek's eyes. No wonder his temper got away from him.

..

She's there when he wakes, bleary and confused, and just for a moment he looks at her without hatred in his eyes.

And then it comes back to him, why he's here, everything that happened, and his eyes cloud over. "What time is it?"

"Three thirty."

He scowls; he's never been one to sleep during the day, but the medication makes him drowsy, so he refuses it, and then the pain gets to be too much so they give him a higher dose and he falls asleep and wakes up to start the cycle over again. Everything is a cycle now, mornings with breakfast and rounds, PT, lunch, argue about meds, PT, his sisters and mother visiting, dinner, sleep. Start over. Rinse and repeat.

It's been almost ten days now, they're ready to go home, and she's ashamed of the fact that this terrifies her. Here in the hospital, there's help for everything. Nurses, doctors, therapists, orderlies. There's the always-welcome distraction of visitors, the constraints of being in a public place.

At home, it'll be just the two of them.

Three, actually.

"What's taking them so long?" he asks, looking tired. "They've been at it all morning."

"We're packed." she says. "We can get out of here as soon as -"

"All set." says the cheery nurse who seems unintimidated by Derek's temper. "I hope I never see you here again!"

"Me too." Derek says, and he softens the words with a smile.

..

"You can't be serious." she groans under her breath. Mark is standing in the parking lot, where she expected Nancy. He looks amused, unlocking and opening the trunk before she gets to him.

"Something came up with one of Nancy's patients." he explains. "So she asked me."

"I can take a cab." Derek says. He's precarious on crutches, weak, tired from the trip from his room to the parking lot. Mark looks at her. She looks at Derek, who refuses to look at either of them.

"Derek." Mark tries. "Come on, man, just let me drive you home."

"I don't need you to do anything for me." Derek says quietly, his voice throbbing with disdain. "You've done enough."

"Derek, get in the car." she says softly, trying to keep the plea out of her voice. "Please."

"You planned this?" Derek laughs, gesturing to Mark with the hand not leaning heavily on his crutch. "Really, Addison, it's a nice touch."

"I asked Nancy." she explains. "You heard Mark, she must have had a patient in the hospital, so she asked him -"

"And you expect me to believe you?" Derek smiles. The coldness of his voice is unsettlingly at odds with the warm expression on his face. The orderly who helped them down to the exit is hovering in the background, looking uncertain.

It's a gray sort of day, overcast and depressing. The air itself seems heavier, weighted by something to come. They stand there in silence, waiting for it to break.

"I wouldn't lie to you." she says finally.

"Oh, because you haven't before." he remarks.

"Derek, that's enough." Mark says roughly. "You can't keep throwing that in her face."

"You seem...concerned." Derek says, delighted that he's taken the bait. "Not that you should be."

"Well, you're being a grade-A ass -"

"Funny you should bring up asses," Derek smirks. "I did get a look at yours while you headed down my stairs after I caught you screwing my wife...but I couldn't see what all the fuss is about."

..

"You call." Mark says, speaking so fast and so low she has to step closer to listen to him. "You need anything at all, Addison, you call me, I'll have my cell-"

"Well isn't this cosy." Derek comments as he maneuvers himself into the foyer in his wheelchair. He's fast on it, even faster than he was in his rehabilitation sessions. "Can I join, or are you not into threesomes?"

She jumps back guiltily, shame coloring her cheeks, even as she knows she shouldn't have. She has nothing to be guilty about...not at the moment. Mark's fears about Derek are entirely unfounded, and she's only doing them both a favor by proving them wrong.

"I'll go." Mark says, his expression inscrutable.

"You do that." Derek says, almost cheerfully, swinging the side of his wheelchair into the door so it slowly swings shut. The resulting thud is loud in the silence, stirring dust motes from the carpet that must have collected in the days they weren't here.

"You know, I never really pictured it." he says when she's halfway into the kitchen.

"Pictured...what?" she asks, taking a few steps back towards him. It's the medication, she tells herself. Trauma, guilt, that's what's making his moods swing like a leaf in a hurricane.

"You and Mark." he answers. He's not almost-cheerful now, there's none if the forced gaiety in his tone that she's noticed whenever someone is around. He sounds harsh, the way she's only ever heard him speak to -

"But you made sure I didn't have to try." he continues. "I got the full technicolor experience...right in the comfort of my own bedroom."

"Derek, I'm _sorry_."

"You've said that."

"Then why-"

"I thought you were my best friend." he exhales. "I thought you were the love of my _life_."

"Maybe -"

-I thought wrong." he finishes.

..

She won't deny it hurts, hurts like hell to have Derek look at her that way. To hear the words he uses when he speaks to her.

She also won't deny that it _didn't_ hurt, when she was actually betraying him. She barely remembers what happened after Mark came in that night, after she closed and latched the door, after they made their way up the stairs in a tangle of limbs and lips and gasped questions and whispered answers.

Her memory only picks up at the lart where Derek is standing in the door of their bedroom, his face impassive, and Mark's shadow is passing over her - _go go go_ she might have hissed - and then cold rain and loud voices, tears hot and salty on her cheeks and then silence until the phone rang to drag her into the next nightmare.

The half hour it took her to burn her eleven-year marriage to the ground doesn't even exist in her memory.

She can hear him turning the cahir around in the guest bedroom down the hall. He made straight for it the minute Mark helped him up the stairs. Derek insisted he be on the second floor, so that he could get back and forth from his office.

She's curled on their bed now, trying to force herself to _remember_. There has to be a reason why. That one thing that finally pushed her over the edge she's lived on for months now, some tangible thing that caused her to make the decisions that she did. She refuses to believe she did it _just because._

Because then that would mean she's like her father. That her marriage means as little to her as her parents' meant to her father.

That she is, after all, no better than him.

Derek was the one who said it was all right if she didn't visit her parents, not if it made her as neurotic and miserable as it did. He never really got along with Archer, but that was to be expected. Archer has never approved of anyone she dated.

She wonders what Archer would say if he saw her now, pregnant, about to be divorced, an adulterer. He'd probably be proud. He'd say she was just like the rest of the Montgomery family - and then he would look the other way and leave her to rip her life to shreds.

And then there's Derek's family. They've set up a rotating schedule for visits - one sister every other evening, Carolyn three times a week. There's enough food in the freezer to feed an army - Carolyn doesn't trust her to feed her recuperating son - and someone has plastered the fridge with get-well-soon cards and drawings from the nieces and nephews.

"Addison?"

She startles at the sound of her name. He asked to be left alone after Mark left, and she assumed he was absorbed in his laptop, catching up on emails. She walks as fast as she can wothout running to his bedroom, pushing the door open with what she hopes isn't unseemly haste.

"What happened?"

He's not in the room, he's in the adjoining bathroom.

"Why don't you tell me?" he asks, holding up the metal box she found in the cabinet under the sink. "Because there seems to be a lot you haven't."

* * *

 ** _Okay, this chapter felt a little...forced to me. I've been running low on ideas - maybe it's exams, but whatever._**

 ** _Reviews would really get back into writing ! Please please please please please leave me some!_**


	11. Chapter 11

She never meant to lie. She didn't.

And anyway, omission isn't lying, is it? Not really. Not if you hide the thruth because it's easier, less painful, to love without it.

She didn't mean to lie. Not about Mark, not about Amy. She simply meant to keep it from Derek, because knowing the truth would hurt him. And that's the last thing she's wanted for months now, the delicate dance she does around Derek's wandering affections, his occasional presence, his wildfire mood swings.

He's stressed, she reasoned. Head of the neurosurgical department at a top notch hospital at age thirty eight isn't for people who take Sundays off and are home by seven. He spends more time in the OR than out, but he's saving lives, honing his formidable skills, he's building his career.

The little things, they didn't have to bother h with the little thimgs except that the little things turned into big things, so big that the weight of the secrets crushed her.

She realises she's speaking out loud now, the words tumbling from her mouth and she can't stop now because only half the truth sounds worse than the whole.

It sounds awful that Amy caught her and Mark kissing in his office that day, but she turned the tables cat-quick, bartering her secret for Addison's.

 _You keep your pretty mouth shut about my life and I'll never tell him what I saw you doing with it,_ Amy promised. _You're just as bad as the rest of them, Addie. I thought you were better._ Or does half the truth sound better? Who lets their sister spiral into a morass of drugs and alcohol in exchange for her silence?

Who kisses their husband's best friend? _Their_ best friend. He was her friend too.

But now she's lost a sister and a husband and a friend, she's all alone. The truth can't hurt anyone now. Can it?

"Where is she?" Derek asks calmly. "Addison, this is serious, she could be _hurt_ , not that you would care -"

"I love her." she says thickly. "I love her like a sister, I would never -"

"Oh, don't say you didn't mean to." he sneers. "She's young, Addison, she doesn't know better, she trusted you and look what you did to her."

She let her down. Amy, little Amy, the tempestously sweet child who turned into the sullen teen who stole frim her wallet, her jewelry but she never said a word. Money is just money, and she liked feeling like a big sister.

She did the things she thought a big sister should do, not that she ever had any guidance. She lectured on birth control, but at fourteen maybe it was too soon. She did her hair, she chose her first pair of earrings. She held her as she cried first over crushes and then real boyfriends, she took her shopping and listened to adolescent ranting. She covered shattered curfews, and nursed hangovers. She taught her to drive in Derek's car, hands over hers on the wheel. She performed CPR as her tears mixed with Amy's blood, pushing and pushing and pushing until she came back to life, dead for three minutes.

Closer than sisters, no blood between them.

Could it be her fault? There are the credit cards she told Derek she lost in the locker rooms and then had canceled. The tennis bracelet she can't quite remember where she put. Stray cash, a couple pairs of earrings.

The brand new bundle of prescription pads she had printed for both of them, but she's almost sure some are missing.

"She's using again, isn't she." Derek says, rattling the box.

She nods quietly. She's no saint, she's never exactly been squeaky clean. She can understand the pull Amy feels, how temptingly easy it is to swallow a pill, let it erase all the problems. She's been known to drown her sorrows in a bottle sometimes, after all.

"Well, you were lying." Derek says, something like satisfaction in his voice. "It _wasn't_ your first time with Mark."

..

Things fall apart for a reason. Amy does drugs for a reason. She kissed Mark for a reason.

She slept with him for an entirely different reason.

Derek doesn't want reasons. He wants answers.

"What do you mean?" he asks, frustrated, he tries to drag his fingers through his hair like he does when he's at the end of his rope and ends up wincing in pain. "What do you mean, you don't know?"

"She didn't tell me wwhere she was going." she says defensively. "She didn't tell anyone."

"She has to come back, she can't just leave her residency program. She's got what, a year left, if that."

"Maybe she'll finish out the year somewhere else."

"Maybe she'll get herself shot or overdose or choke on her own vomit." Derek retorts. "You know what she's like. You know what she's done."

 _And you don't know the half of it._

"Who was she working with?" he asks suddenly. "If she's still using their DEA number, we could -"

"She wouldn't need to." she says miserably. "The prescription pads, they're missing. She took some of both of ours."

"Jesus." he exhales. "Addison, are you _sure_ you don't know? This isn't just some secret you're keeping?"

"Why the hell would I do that?" she snaps. "I don't know where she is, or I'd have dragged her back here by now."

"Get on the phone." he orders. "Start calling, every program you can think of, we probably know someone somewhere and if she's finishing her final year somewhere else -"

"Derek." she whispers. "You should call Mark."

..

They're friends. He's lived with Mark long enough to know that the steady stream of girls he dates mean little more than sex to him.

He's lived with Mark long enough to know what concern looks like on his face, and the way he's looking at Addison now is concerned.

 _It was just the one time._

"Look, you have five minutes to talk." he starts, making Addison flinch a little. Mark looks away from her. But not at him.

"Did she tell you anything? Where she was going, who she's with?" Addison pleads. "She's using again, Mark."

"I knew."

"You knew." Derek says, his voice throbbing. "Now you're telling me."

"She...she came over a few months ago." Mark says heavily. "Said she needed a little cash, she was running low on rent and she wasn't making her loan repayments, but she was - you know what she's like when she's using."

He does know. They all know. His mother, voice raised, hus sisters, resorting to guilt and blackmail. Mark, the one who drove her to rehab because Derek couldn't look at her. Addison, a red handprint glowing on her pale cheek.

"You gave it to her anyway." Addison exhales. " _Mark._ "

"I thought she was getting better." Mark yells. "She told me she was going to meetings, she wanted to finish her residency, she was applying to fellowships -"

"What do you mean?" Addison asks, eyes narrowed. "None of us have seen her in months, when did you?"

Mark stares at her a moment, his eyes drifting to the immaculately polished floor, and that one second of hesitation is all Derek needs to know what must have happened.

After all, they all know each other _so_ well.

"Oh, Addie." Derek says disparagingly. "Did you think you were the only one he's slept with?"

* * *

 ** _I'm ...sort of digging back in titime, I think, with this story, back to maybe the point where everything started going wrong. These characters just have such gloriously entangled pasts._**

 ** _If you like it and plan on reading...please review._**

 ** _If you think this is/ should be a MerDer story, please do not review. You will not magically change my mind._**


	12. Chapter 12

_**Thanks to the people who reviewed the last chapter!**_

* * *

"Yes, yes of course." Mark says. "I would love to. I'm sure he would too. Thank you."

Her head is still spinning. Mark and Amy.

Mark and her.

Derek and her.

Mark and Amy. When? She thinks it must have been only a few days before she kissed Mark in her office, when Amy caught them. He never said a word.

Mark. And Amy. Derek's sister. His missing, recovering addict of a sister.

What was Mark _thinking_?

What had _she_ been thinking?

Mark sighs as he tosses the phone onto the coffee table. "I've been roped into lecturing at Duke, but no sign of Amy."

"What about you?" Derek asks her.

"Nothing."

It was... a year ago? More? They went to dinner, Derek and Amy and her. Amy was just starting her fifth year at Mass Gen and she was excited, chattering about the clinical trial she was assisting on and the surgeries she'd gotten to do with her mentor. She traded war stories with Derek, teasing them, asking about the rest of the family. She was only in the city for a few days, attending a conference, but she wanted to let them know she was okay. Sober, going on almost ten years now.

It was the first time she'd seen Derek in three days - they were on opposing schedules at the hospital, and she'd only caught glimpses of him as they rotated in and out of ORs. She didn't know if he'd seen her, or if he'd even wanted to. But he turned up at the restaurant on time, in the shirt she'd left in his office with a post- it instructing him to wear it stuck on.

He made conversation through dinner, and neither of them got paged. He actually came home with her, afterwards, and they had a drink because they hadn't earlier, in front of Amy.

"She's doing great." Derek had smiled. "I never thought she'd get this far."

"She's your sister," she'd laughed. "Of course she did."

Then, maybe a month later, the news that she was taking a year's leave from the program. Derek was furious - he called her, yelled, called the director of the program and asked him to talk to Amy. Make her come back.

She asked Amy to move in with them.

* * *

"It's my fault."

She hears Mark, but doesn't say anything. It's always someone's fault.

The friend who gave her her first pill. The second, the third. Her family, who thought baby Amy was just being rebellious.

She herself, leaving a seventeen year old Amelia alone in the house. Carolyn was at a wedding of a friend's grandson or something equally boring, and Amelia stayed at home. She and Derek went down for the weekend; they were in the middle of their second year and it was the first time they had two days off in a row at the same time. They'd been married almost two years by then, and she remembers Carolyn's constant chatter about grandchildren, how much she enjoyed spending time with them, that she already had about seven but she wouldn't mimd more... Derek seemed unaffected, shrugging her off. She felt guilty, then harried, then finally annoyed.

She remembers Amy at that age fondly; short, scrappy, dressing as scandalously as she could without her mother grounding her. She was fun, that Amy. She'd follow her around, she liked to play dress up in her closet, twirling in front of the mirror and posing for polaroids she pinned to a felt board in her room.

She was quiet that weekend, though, spending a lot of time in her room blasting music. Derek yelled at her, then cajoled, then finally threatened to take back his ancient Mustang, promised to Amy on her sixteenth birthday. That got her out of her room, but she spent the day on the couch with her headphones on.

And then Derek went to see a friend from school, and he asked her to come but Carolyn had asked them not to leave Amy alone. So she stayed.

Someone from the hospital called her, asking her for something - it was trivial, but she couldn't get a signal. She stepped outside for a moment. Just a moment.

* * *

He remembers that day, almost twenty years ago now. He went to meet a friend from high school - he remembers it was horribly dull, they had nothing left in common anymore and the coffee was terrible to boot. He knew it would be boring and he'd asked Addison to come, but she decided to stay with Amy instead. They would probably paint their nails and talk about how annoying he was.

Afterwards, Addison would say that she stepped outside for a moment - just a moment - and the next thing she knew there was the sound of metal crunching into wood, and people were screaming, and by the time she got there Amy was stumbling from the smoking wreck, scraped and shaken but otherwise unhurt.

At the hospital they would learn from the tox screen that she was in fact as high as a kite, she couldn't walk straight, much less drive. She got three stitches and six months of being grounded.

He didn't speak to Addison for a week.

* * *

When she was in the beginning of her third year of residency she sprained her ankle. It was the stupid annual surgery vs. medicine softball game and she wasn't even playing, but she slipped on someone's spilled soda and wound up having to wear sneakers to work for weeks. Derek thought it was hilarious.

They gave her a prescription for painkillers - it was actually a bad sprain but she was not about to fall behind at work - and they made her fuzzy and loopy, so she didn't take them. Amy came to stay one weekend to celebrate graduating high school - just barely, but no one cared - and it was bad timing because she and Derek both had major surgery and had to stay late. They had moved up to being first assist by then, and neither was about to pass up a chance to cut.

Derek came home a few minutes before she did. He must have taken a cab, and she walked, which meant he had probably left at around the same time she did but didn't tell her. The doorman said he had already arrived, and she recalls calling him a choice name as she dragged herself upstairs.

He found the apartment dark - they hadn't bought the brownstone yet - and he called out for her, then for Amy. He said later that he thought they'd gone out without him. Just like him to forget she was still at the hospital.

He tossed his jacket on the couch like she was always yelling at him not to, then went into their bedroom. He took off his watch and put it two inches away from the little china tray put on the dresser for this exact purpose, which usually ratcheted her blood pressure up a few points.

Then he went into the bathroom, and screamed so loudly she heard him on the second floor landing. It was an almost feminine scream, and she might have teased him about it if the circumstances hadn't been so dire.

* * *

His third year, Amy came for the weekend after high school graduation. He had a late surgery and came home to a dark apartment. He remembers being insulted that his wife and sister had apparently headed out without him - doubtless so Amy could buy clothes his mother would have a herat attack upon seeing, then blame Addison for it, which would make his wife complain about his mother until...

He found Amy in a puddle of vomit, unconscious, the orange bottle still perched neatly on the counter next to a white streak of powder.

Her skin was cold, her lips bluish, no palpable pulse. He tipped her head back, shoved down on her chest, wiped the foul vomit from her mouth with bare fingers.

Addison ran into the tiny bathroom still in her coat, clutching her bag; she was screaming something at him, but he couldn't hear over the hammering of his heart.

She must have called an ambulance, because paramedics came bursting in about a lifetime later. They made him stop compressions, took over themselves. He knew them from when they brought patients into the ER. One of them nodded to him as they left.

They left him standing there awkwardly, hands sticky, his face wet. Addison was silent, breathing panicky little breaths, staring at him. He was staring at the little empty bottle, with Addison's name on it.

* * *

He always maintained that she should have known better. That she should have made sure Amy couldn't have gotten at anything. She knew his sister was a recovering addict - why wasn't she more careful?

She put away all the knives after that, the sewing kit Carolyn optimistically gave her one year for Christmas, the suture kit in the first aid box, the scalpels from their med school dissection sets. Hid the liquor. Locked the medicine cabinet.

Amy never came back to that apartment; Mark drove her to a rehab facility that Addison herself visited only once, because Amy hurled a glass at her and screamed at her to _leave me alone._ It was plastic, though - no sharp objects allowed - and the resulting bruise on her forehead was faint enough that Derek never noticed.

Derek never visited.

* * *

Addison refused to speak to him for days that year, after that last blazing argument they had about him not being there for Amy.

The way he saw it, Amy had thrown away her life. She had brought this misery upon herself. She deserved it; no one shoved the pills down her throat, did they?

And he was busy, so busy. Third year is no joke. He was vying for a neuro fellowship in a few years, cramming research into his packed surgical schedules, wringing every hour possible out of their already-limited weeks. He didn't have time to trek upstate to someplace Addison's friend in Psych found, where irresponsible people like his sister go to sweat it out.

He also didn't think he could look Amelia in the eye.

Not after what she did to his mother. What she did to his marriage.

* * *

She remembers that after Amy was done with rehab, she got into a small community college. Lived at home. None of them even knew what she was studying until she graduated first in her class, aced the MCAT and went to Harvard.

She knew Derek liked the idea of his wayward little sister cooped up in lecture halls and libraries, studying, focused. It kept her out of trouble. They were attendings by then.

Derek was content with his job. So was she. Hadn't they sacrificed their twenties - and okay, some of their thirties, to reach as far as they had? One fellowship is enough, which is what she said to Vivian when she ambushed her with an application for a fellowship in medical genetics. Vivian said she should do it, that it would put her in a class all her own. That Derek wasn't the only star surgeon in the family.

And speaking of family... they had a discussion, after they both got those jobs. The kind of discussion they had been putting off since their wedding, almost eight years ago. They had finally agreed that it was the right time - that they could afford to slow down a _little_ , that they were ready to start a family. She threw her birth control pills in the trash.

She forgot all about the application after that, actually. Vivian made her send it in.

They went on vacation that year, celebrating the results of nearly fifteen years each of training. Megève. Skiing for him, and she found herself a spa. She didn't like racing down a mountain at breakneck speed with two strips of wood on her feet.

She remembers how relaxed he was, smiling, the old romantic Derek she had married coming out after a long time.

Vivian called at three in the morning, local time, shrieking. She had gotten it, the fellowship.

Derek said he was proud of her.

* * *

He remembers that time they went on holiday to some ski resort Addison picked out, where she spent half the time avoiding the actual skiing.

Vivian called in the middle of the night, about some acceptance that he'd heard nothing about until then. Apparently his wife didn't think it was necessary to discuss taking a two-year fellowship with him.

He was proud, of course. She'd be one of a handful of people in the world who could do whatever is was she was planning to do.

But it did interfere with his - their - plans. They had agreed to start trying. She made a whole thimg about throwing away the pills she had been religious about taking their entire relationship, and then insisted they practice. Often. Not that he was complaining.

But then this - it would mean putting off their baby plans for two, maybe three years. They had already been married for eight, dating for four before that.

He pointed this out, and she accused him of not being supportive, whereupon he accused her of being selfish and to cut a long story short they came home three days early and she started the fellowship a week later.

And now she's pregnant. Say what you want about Addison, but she does have a knack for yanking the rug out from under his feet.

* * *

"What's that?" Derek frowns.

"Your meds." she says, stating the obvious. He won't take them, she'll ask him to, he'll make a pointed remark about her nagging, she'll leave, and he'll swallow them five minutes later. She's convinced he's just trying to kill her via irritation.

"Did your boyfriend leave?" he asks.

"Mark left, yes."

"Big help he was." he mutters, accepting the glass of water. "I can't believe he knew. I can't believe _you_ knew Amy was using, and didn't tell me."

Would it have made a difference? Should she have told Derek?

She'd carried her suspicion that Amelia was using again like dead weight, feeling it like a cold lump in her stomach. She was good at keeping secrets, though, she'd learned young, and she managed to keep it from Derek. Derek would just yell at Amelia, and she'd storm off in the kind of adolescent fit she hadn't quite outgrown even now.

She knew Amelia was definitely using only after she caught her and Mark kissing in her office, when she traded her silence in exchange for secrecy.

Mark was sleeping with Amy. Feeding her misery, giving her more reasons to hate herself, enabling her drug habit.

Mark slept with her. And okay, it was mostly her idea, but there is something inherently wrong about that - and not just the fact that she is his best friend's wife.

Amy must have laughed at them. She kept her end of the bargain, though. She never breathed a word to anyone.

Amy kept her secret.

 _Honesty - both with ourselves and with others, in word, deed and thought._

Wasn't that one of the things they said in the meeting? She'd gone to a few with Amy, when she was feeling particularly low and needed support.

Honesty.

Is it her fault? Again? Is she responsible for destroying Amelia, just as she has hurt Derek?

"If you're going to vomit, please do it in the bathroom." Derek says, handing back the glass.

"Addie - are you okay?"

She jumps a little when he takes her hand, his eyes looking concerned above his scowling mouth.

"I...I need to tell you something."

* * *

 _ **Please review! This might be the last update I post for a while - exams coming up - but I would really love to know what you thought and where you would like to see the story go next !**_

 _ **I always thought that Addek didn't fall apart overnight, and maybe it was a hundred little things over the years that drove them apart. Eleven years seems like a bloody long time to be married.**_


	13. Chapter 13

_**Thanks for all the reviews on the last chapter!**_

* * *

In the last six months, he did thirty two ventricular shunts, forty three tumor resections, twenty eight emergency procedures, seven cranioplasties, a corpus callosectomy, a dorsal rhizotomy, several sympathectomies and endarterectomies, and resected a glioblastoma so spectacular he published it in an international journal.

He saved eighty of those hundred and fourteen patients. He took three days off during this entire time. He missed his birthday, his mother's birthday, a niece's graduation and several more occasions he cannot recall.

But he saved eighty people. Eighty people whose families cried in his arms with gratitude, who showered him in praise and blessings, whose gifts of flowers and cards and the odd bottle of liquor are still strewn in his office somewhere.

During those six months, his younger sister has turned into a drug addict, his wife has cheated on him and his best friend has betrayed him. His family is irritated with him and his friends have finally stopped calling.

"When?" he asks. His voice comes out a whisper, and he has to force it past his dry lips.

When he thought it was just the once, he could comfort himself by thinking it was a spontaneous bad decision. If it was more than that ... it would mean she did it deliberately.

"Three months ago," Addison replies. She's still standing in front of him, clutching the empty glass. "I -"

"Three months ago, you were kissing Mark? In your office?"

"I - I know there is no justification." she says quietly. "But-"

"You felt like it?" He was just _there?"_ he asks. He can't stand to be near her all of a sudden.

"It was our anniversary." she says, her hand dropping off the arm of his wheelchair as he moves away. "I waited for you."

Right. Eleven years. He remembers that night. He had spent all day in the hospital; it was just one of those days when his pager buzzed nonstop, all his patients were developing complications, the ORs were running late... there were a million reasons he couldn't make it on time. He remembers returning to his office late at night to a stern glare from the receptionist he shared with another neurosurgeon.

She said that his wife had been here. That she had waited for him; he recalls feeling mildly irritated at what was clearly an attempt to send him on a guilt trip. Didn't she have patients or surgeries of her own?

It was way past the dinner hour by then, and he went straight home. She wasn't there. He assumed she was out drinking with Savvy, bitching about him. He went to bed.

* * *

She cane home the night she kissed Mark seething with anger and wracked by guilt. The anger was for Derek; the guilt was for herself because she doubted he'd care what she had been doing.

She could still picture Mark's eyes, confused at first as she stepped closer to him. She had been sensed it before, the subtle shift in dynamic between the two of them. She felt like she was drifting away from her husband, and towards Mark, like they were some sort of polarised magnets that could not all be together at the same time. She felt like she ws standing on a beach as the tide ran out, the sand disappearing beneath her feet; everything shifted, but she was still standing there.

Anyway, she stepped closer to Mark. He placed a hand on the small of her back, his palm searing even through the fabric of her dress. He was taller than Derek, talker than her; she had to lean upwards. He closed his eyes, maybe because he felt guilty for kissing his best friend's wife. For wanting to kiss his best friend's wife.

She stood in front of the mirror in the downstairs bathroom, running her fingertips over the slight pink on her jaw. Mark's stupid artful facial hair. Her finger was still bleeding, from that damn glass frame that shattered when she bumped into it.

Amy had laughed out loud, a heartfelt guffaw. 'Just came to say happy anniversary," she had chuckled. 'But I guess not.'

Derek was asleep in bed when she went upstairs. She hadn't spoken to him all day. Eleven years of marriage.

He'd left his clothes in a messy, sad pile on the floor and toothpaste in the sink. She felt a little of the guilt dissipate - only a little - and then she went to bed, too.

* * *

"So Amelia saw you." he repeats. "Kissing Mark."

Addison nods. She's retreated from him, curling into the overstuffed armchair opposite. She used to sit in that chair instead of her own desk to read, he remembers. He'd be at his desk catching up on work and she would tiptoe in and spend hours reading journals or the kind of novels she wouldn't be caught dead reading in public.

"And Amelia said -"

"She said she wouldn't tell you -" Addison begins, her voice hollow.

"- if you didn't tell me. About the fact that she was using again."

"Yes."

"And you agreed to that."

"I'm sorry."

Sorry. She says she's sorry. He doesn't know what to believe anymore. His entire life has just imploded.

Amy used to tell him everything - _everything_. Even after he had moved out, she used to call every other day and just chatter away about her school and her friends and everything their mother wouldn't let her do. When she was older she seemed closer to his wife, but she still confided in him.

Addison has never been one to talk about herself. He decided years ago that it was probably because her parents had never cared to know what their daughter did all day, and after a while she must have stoped trying to tell them. He used to make a point to ask her. He loved hearing her quirky little anecdotes, her unique outlook on the most mundane of things. He can't remember when he stopped asking.

"Would you have told me?" he asks after a while. "Even if Amy hadn't made her ... bargain...with you, would you have told me?"

"Derek, I ... I was never sure. It was just little things, like a missing pair of earrings or ... I thought I had lost my credit card - and the prescription pads, the pills I found in that bag she asked to borrow. I didn't put it all together until -"

"Until she went missing."

* * *

When she was six, she ran away. The Captain was at work, doing whatever it was that he did there, and Bizzy had just asked for - _the hundredth time, Addison -_ to go play by herself and leave her alone.

She packed her stuffed cat, her favorite jacket, and a sugar cookie. She walked all the way to the stable, because in the stories people always ran away on horses. She was too short to saddle one herself, not that she knew how, so she just sat in an empty stall. She fed half her cookie to Archer's horse - named Dog, solely to piss off their mother - and ate the other half. It got cold at the same time it got dark, and she had to pee even though she was so thirsty. She wasn't sure if she could get back to the house in the dark.

By the time her brother found her, Bizzy was actually worried. Archer marched her into the study, and Bizzy made a tiny shrieking sound, then buried her face in her hands. The Captain patted his wife on her shoulder. And that was that.

But she remembers feeling a warm rush of joy; Bizzy was worried. She had stopped her work, to wait for her, for Addison, to come home. She felt noticed, which was what she had wanted all along.

What if that's what Amy wants?

She doesn't mention the whole story to Derek, just what she thinks about Amelia.

"Maybe." he says. He's doing the exercises PT left for him, his face impassive as his right hand strains against the elastic band. "Maybe not."

"Derek...what if she wants us to find her?"

"She might have left a clue." he says dryly. "Addison. This is Amelia. She's probably going to wander around until her money runs out, then she'll be back. I'd tell you not to worry, except for the fact that you could have stopped this from ever happening - but you chose not to. You chose to keep your affair a secret, instead -"

"Derek, I swear I didn't know for sure."

"But you could have mentioned it in passing, like 'hey, Derek, Amelia might be relapsing and I kissed Mark.'"

His eyes are shining and blank, his gaze focused not on her but on his hand.

"But you didn't." he says cuttingly.

"I'll get it." she says, moving towards the door. Whoever it is rings it again, twice, so that the sound echoes.

"Where's the patient?" Savvy says brightly. "You look awful, Addison, by the way."

* * *

 _ **I understand that everyone is very busy, but can I please get a few reviews? It's very discouraging when I don't, and it makes it hard to motivate myself to wrote another chapter.**_


	14. Chapter 14

**_Thank you to all the lovely readers who reviewed the last chapter!_**

* * *

"But what were you doing there at that hour, anyway?" Weiss frowns, accepting the cup of coffee she hands him. "Thanks, Addison."

"I mean, it's nowhere near the hospital..." Weiss continues. "Or your practice."

"I was going to see a patient." Derek says smoothly, waving away a fussing Savvy. "An old patient."

"In the middle of the night?" Savvy asks. "Wow. That's...dedicated."

"He was on his way back." she supplies when Derek seems at a loss for words. "He was on his way back home from seeing his patient...who's doing really well, by the way."

"Excellent recovery." Derek agrees. "He wanted to thank me."

"You didn't go?" Savvy scolds her. "Addie, you should have."

In the past, if this lie they've spun were true, she would have been with Derek. She's met many a grateful patient of her husband's, and vice versa, listened to his praises being sung, smiled graciously, wished them fast and complete recoveries. In the past, he would have introduced her to this patient.

He hasn't done that in a while. There was a time when he used to know her schedule, when they took the effort to puzzle out free moments between surgeries and consults, when every moment not spent working was with each other. There was a time when her husband sat in the gallery to watch her operate and then took her to dinner afterwards - a time when he actually, voluntarily, acknowledged her existence without her having to beg.

"Addie?" Savvy calls. "You really are a million miles away, aren't you. I was just saying, this is the perfect excuse to get rid of that awful jeep."

Ah, yes. Derek's beloved, smelly, rattly jeep. He bought it secondhand without telling her - _you know you wouldn't have let me, Addie -_ and claimed it was perfect for summer trips at the beach house. Its seats stood up well to damp swimsuits and sandy feet, panting dogs and dripping popsicles and clamoring nieces and nephews. It was always Derek's, though, she's never touched it. He used to park it at a garage a few blocks away, and it always looked so out of place next to her sleek Mercedes.

She wonders if it would have made it all the way to Seattle.

"It wasn't the cars' fault." Derek says mildly. "Right, Addie?"

* * *

"Addison."

She startles a little at the sound of her friend's voice, the glass in her hand almost slipping into the sink. "Sav. You scared me."

Savvy stares at her with piercing blue eyes. Her oldest, closest friend. They shared a room and then an apartment in college. Savvy was her wingman, her confidante, sounding board, cheerleader, protector and sister rolled into one bright, feisty package.

Savvy was the first to know it when she lost her heart to Derek at Columbia. Savvy was maid of honor at their wedding, as she was at Savvy and Weiss' wedding.

Savvy knows her best.

"You've been jumping out of your skin since I got here." Savvy says quietly, clasping her elbow so she can't move away. "God, you must have been so scared, Addison...why didn't you call me?"

Scared? She remembers sitting huddled at the foot of the stairs, wet, shivering with cold and fear, fear that cut so deep she felt it in her bones. Fear that she had ruined her marriage, that she had ruined Derek and Mark's friendship, fear for her future. The heartstopping terror of that phone call, the blank, white sensation of horror in the hospital when she saw him for the first time.

The constant, low grade tremors that have rocked her since he was discharged. The uncertainty about the life she's bringing her unborn child into. _Scared_ doesn't begin to cover it.

And yet... He doesn't want anyone to know.

 _Let's see you lie,_ he said.

"I wasn't thinking straight." she admits, turning away to grab a dishcloth. "I...called Mark."

"You must be so relieved." Savvy shudders. "He's looking so much like himself already, isn't he?"

She hums noncommittally as Savvy chatters on, automatically starting to dry the glasses she's rinsing. They had this routine in college - she was premed and Sav was pre-law, and they worked hard, but in the evenings after dinner they always stood beside each other, one washing and the other drying, swapping tidbits about classes and friends and cute boys and not-so-cute boys.

"...but Weiss says I should," Savvy trails off, looking irritated. "Addie!"

"Sorry?"

"I was just...you know what, never mind. There is obviously something on your mind. Spill."

"You mean, other than the fact that my husband was seriously injured in an accident and that his dominant hand may never be the same again?" she asks wryly.

"Yes." Savvy says obstinately. "I know you, Addison _Adrienne_ Forbes Montgomery. There's something you aren't telling me, and we might be closer to forty than twenty, but I'm not above getting you drunk to make you talk."

Nancy was happy, but the knowledge of her pregnancy in Nancy's hands feels like a grenade. Derek's reaction...was what she had expected, but not what she had wanted. She wants one, just one person to hear this and be happy for her. She could use the optimism.

"I'm pregnant." she blurts, lowering her voice so Derek and Weiss, ensconced in the family room, can't hear.

She muffles Savvy's resultant shriek with her wet dishcloth, earning herself a pinch.

"Darling, that's amazing." Savvy is gasping, her blue eyes shining with tears. "Oh my god, a baby."

 _See_ she thinks silently. _Amazing._

"Sav." she says, alarmed. "Are you..."

"I'm so sorry." her friend sobs. "I'm happy for you, really I am."

"Savvy, what is it?" she asks gently.

"My aunt," Savvy whimpers. "Aunt Cecilia, you remember her, she passed. Ovarian cancer."

Her aunt...along with her other two aunts, her mother and a cousin.

"I'm getting you tested." she says firmly. "And then you'll know for sure."

"It's not that." Savvy sniffles. "I mean, it's that too, but...we were finally settled, you know? We decided we were going to try for a baby. Weiss was so excited...and now this."

"What do you mean, _this?_ "

"I..." Savvy stares at her for a second, her eyes red. "You're supposed to be happy right now, I shouldn't -"

"Out with it."

"I tested positive for the gene." Savvy confesses. "But we're not talking about me, we're talking about you. Derek must have been so happy."

"Yeah." she says. "He was."

* * *

She's clearing up after their friends have left, enjoying the distinct silence that comes after guests have left, the windows opened to let in fresh, cold air.

Derek retreated upstairs, surprisingly adept at the crutches PT has encouraged him to use. He's allowed partial weight on the injured leg, and by keeping one wheelchair upstairs and one downstairs for when he gets tired, he can get around the house without much help. Which suits him perfectly and leaves her straining for sounds of falling and slipping.

She got rid of all the rugs, discreetly put away obstructive furniture and she keeps creeping after him until he snaps at her not to, and it's nice to have a moment to herself as she straightens up.

Thirteen weeks today.

Her baby weighs an ounce, is maybe as long as a finger, with translucent skin and miniscule fingerprints. The end of her first trimester, the time she herself would advise a patient her age to wait until she announced it. Her chance of miscarrying is lower now.

She should be happy, like Savvy said. She should be eager and excited.

Since she's thinking about it anyway, she forces down a vitamin pill and eats a banana.

She loves babies. She's stood in the nursery before, filled with a sudden longing, almost a physical ache, as she looked at the squirming pink creatures other people would take home. She's stood with her lips pressed to a pulsing soft spot, her heart throbbing to the beat, wishing it were her own child. But there's never been time. Pregnancy, maternity leave, the constant emergencies that seem to crop up around small children- it would be irreparably damaging to her career. Derek isn't one to step back either, and somehow they've stopped discussing the possibility of children.

And now here she is, pregnant and uncertain, while her best friend who has to choose between being a mother and being alive is trying to make a decision.

Here she is, avoiding the husband she cheated on, while somewhere someone is grieving the young man who died in the accident.

She's avoiding Mark, their friends, their family.

All to keep a secret.

* * *

He wonders if it's him. If he's the one driving people away. First Amy, then Addison. Mark. His family.

If he's honest, if he looks beyond the pain and the rage and the betrayal for a moment, he sees them drifting slowly away from him, over the course of years. Every _maybe later_ and _I'm busy_ pushed them a little further.

The thing is, he doesn't want to be honest. It's easier to play the victim, the injured betrayed husband, to sit here and rage at Addison when in fact she was the one who had the courage to actually _do_ something.

He felt it too, the slowly widening rift between them. They could talk for hours, the two of them. Even after a tiring day in the OR, they lay in bed and they would talk softly into the darkness until they fell asleep.

He remembers there were times when he routinely wouldn't see his wife for two or three days at a time, when he had no idea where she was at any given time or what was happening in her life...but he didn't do anything about it. Addison would show up in his office, smiling tentatively, and he would recall coming home to an empty house three times last week and his stomach would twist in an ugly knot. And he would say no, and the infinitesimal dampening of the light in her eyes made him feel a little better.

All the light is gone now, he thinks as he looks at his wife. Her eyes look empty and dull, nothing like the sparkling mischievous gleam he knew so well. When did that happen?

"Why are you in here?" Addison asks cautiously, hovering in the doorway. This was where Amy slept, the ill-fated few months she was here. Addison seems to have managed to restore it to normal - he can't see any of the debris his sister left behind.

"I'm not supposed to be?" he asks. Not what he wanted to say, but it just feels so damn good to watch his words hurt her. She hurt him without saying a thing; this is his way of getting revenge. But revenge isn't making him feel as good as he thought it would.

She falls silent, standing half in shadow. She used to walk straight into any room he was in; she's slipped into his office more than once when he worked too late in the early days of their marriage and perched in his lap. She didn't mind being in the bathroom while he showered, or of joining him if the mood took her. She'd make herself at home in his dorm room, or his library carrel. He never minded - he secretly loved the fact that she would spend time with him doing absolutely nothing.

He fiddles aimlessly with the sheets on the bed, knowing that the wrinkles annoy her. She's forever straightening things - covers, her clothes, his clothes, her hair, things on tables. He can practically feel her fingers itching ten feet away.

There's something between the mattress and the box.

"Derek..." Addison is saying. "Savvy tested positive for the gene-"

"Did you change these?" he asks. He thinks it's ridiculous to have a fully prepared guest room when no guests loom in the future, but his wife has always insisted and it's one of the things he came to accept.

"No," Addison says after a while, sounding...annoyed? "I didn't. Ida did."

"How long have these been on?"

"A week? I don't know." she snaps. "Were you even listening to me?"

He's managed to snag a corner of the object. It's a slim notebook, black fake leather cracking at the spine. It has a small metal lock at the side, the kind of cheap thing his sisters wrote in growing up. Mark showed him how to pick the lock with an unraveled paper clip. His cheek hurt for a week where Nancy slapped him.

Addison is beside him before he can call out, slim fingers tracing the worn cover.

"Amy wrote a diary?"

* * *

 ** _Reviews are love. I know I haven't updated anything in a while but I had exams and then my phone went for a swim and I couldn't write. I'll have more time now, so please please please please review and let me know what you think!_**


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